
Class 
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSn^ Q 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON . BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. 

TORONTO 



A 



THE 



CHILDHOOD OF THE 
WORLD 

A SIMPLE ACCOUNT OF 

MAN'S ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY 



BY 

EDWARD CLODD 

n 



/ 



NEW EDITION, REWRITTEN AND ENLARGED 



Nrm fork 
THE MACMILLAN CGIMPANY 

1914 



All rights reserved 



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New rewritten and enlarged edition 

Copyright, 1914, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1914 



MAR 12 1914 



'CI.A3T1288 ^. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

For the information of parents and others into 
whose hands this book may fall, it may be stated that 
it is an attempt, in the absence of any kindred elemen- 
tary work, to narrate, in as simple language as the 
subject wiU permit, the story of man's progress from 
the unknown time of his appearance upon the earth, 
to the period from which writers of history ordinarily 
begin. 

That an acquaintance with the earHest known races 
of man should precede the study of any single depart- 
ment of his later history is obvious, but it must be 
remembered that such knowledge has become attain- 
able only within the last few years, and at present 
enters but little, if at all, into the course of study at 
schools. 

Thanks to the patient and careful researches of men 
of science, the way is rapidly becoming clearer for 
tracing the steps by which, at evervarying rates of 
progress, the leading races have advanced from sav- 
agery to civilization, and for thus giving a completeness 

V 



VI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

to the history of mankind which the assumptions of an 
arbitrary chronology would render impossible. 

As the Table of Contents indicates, the First Part of 
this book describes the progress of man in material 
things, while the Second Part seeks to explain his mode 
of advance from lower to higher stages of religious 
belief. 

Although this work is written for the young, I ven- 
ture to hope that it will afford to older persons who 
will accept the simplicity of its style interesting in- 
formation concerning primitive man. 

In thinking it undesirable to encumber the pages of 
a work of this class with foot-notes and references, I 
have been at some pains to verify the statements made, 
the larger body of which may be found in the works of 
Tylor, Lubbock, Nilsson, Waitz, and other ethnolo- 
gists, to whom my obligations are cordially expressed. 

I am fully conscious how slenderly each department 
of human progress has been dealt with in this work, 
but in seeking to compass a great subject within a 
small space, it has been my anxiety to break the con- 
tinuity of the story as Httle as possible. 

E. C. 
133, Brecknock Road, London: 

December, 1872. 



PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION 

So enormous has been the advance of knowledge con- 
cerning primitive man since this book was written forty- 
one years ago that, as it is still in demand, the neces- 
sity is borne-in upon me either to mend it or end it. 

I have chosen the former course, and shall be well 
content if the work which this has entailed has rec- 
ompense in the revised edition finding as welcoming an 
audience as the original had the good fortune to secure. 

Strafford House, Aldeburgh, Suffolk. 
December J 19 13. 



NOTE 

At the request of the Society for Providing Cheap 
Literature for the BKnd, this book has been printed in 
raised type, and may be had at the Society, College 
Street, Worcester, for 4s. 6d. It has also been trans- 
lated into Dutch, Finnish, French, German, ItaHan, 
Sekwana, and Swedish. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 



Man the Worker 



Chapter 




Page 


I. 


Introductory 


3 


II. 


Man and Apes 


lO 


III. 


Man's Great Age on the Earth 


15 


IV. 


Wanderings OF Early Races . . . . 


21 


V. 


Man's First Wants 


26 




A. Food 


26 




B. Warmth 


28 




C. Shelter 


31 


M. 


^Ian's First Tools and Weapons . 


39 


VII. 


Discov'ERY OF Metals .... 


46 


vin. 


Mankind as Hunters, Shepherds, Farmers 






Traders and Sailors .... 


53 


IX. 


Language 


60 


X. 


Writing 


66 


XI. 


Counting and Measuring 


73 


XII. 


Games, Song, Music and Dancing . 


• 75 


XIII. 


Man's Progress in all Things 


. 82 


XIV. 


Decay of Peoples 


. 85 


XV. 


SUAmARY 


. 88 



XI 



xn 



CONTENTS 



PART n 



Man the Thinker 



Chapter 




Page 


X\T. 


Introductory 


95 


XVII. 


Man's First Questions .... 


I02 


XVIII. 


Man's Fear of the Unknown 


1 06 


XIX. 


Myths about the Earth and Man . 


109 


XX. 


Myths about Sun and Moon . 


113 


XXI. 


Myths ABOUT Eclipses .... 


115 


XXII. 


Myths about Stars .... 


117 


XXIII. 


Nature-Worship ..... 


120 




I. Worship of Lifeless Things 


121 




A. The Earth .... 


121 




B. Water ... 


124 




C. Stones and Mountains 


125 




D. Fire 


128 




E. Sun, Moon and Stars 


130 




2. Worship of Living Things 


137 




F. Animal Worship 


137 




G. Trees ..... 


141 




H. Man 


145 


XXIV. 


Belief in JMagic and Witchcraft . 


146 


XXV. 


Fetish-Worship and Idolatry 


153 


XXVI. 


Sacrifice and Pil\yer .... 


156 


XXVII. 


Ani^hsm — Man's Ideas about the Soul and / 


V 




Future Life ..... 


160 


XXVIII. 


Polytheism, or Belief in many Gods 


170 



^ 



CONTENTS 



• •• 

xm 



OlAPTER 

XXIX. Dualism, or Belief in Two Gods . 

XXX. IMoNOTHEiSM, or Belief IN One God 

XXXI. Three Stories about Abraham 

XXXII. Great Teachers .... 

XXXIII. Sacred Books .... 

XXXIV. Summary ..... 



Page 

173 
176 
181 

185 
188 
205 



PART III 



Man the Discoverer and Inventor 



XXXV. Modern Science . 
XXX\T. Conclusion . 

List of Selected Books 
Index .... 



209 
224 
226 
231 



PART I 

MAN THE WORKER 



THE 
CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



INTRODUCTORY 

Everything in this wide world has a history; that is, 
it has something to tell or something to be found out 
about what it was, and how it has come to be what 
it is. 

Even of the small stones l>^ng in the roadway, or 
about the garden, clever men, after a great deal of 
painstaking, have found out a history more wonderful 
than all the fairy stories you have been told; and if 
this be true, as true it is, of dead stones and many 
other things which cannot speak, you may beheve that 
a history stranger still can be written about living 
things. 

And it is the history of the most wonderful li\'ing 
thing that this world has ever seen that I want to tell 
you. You will perhaps think that I am about to de- 
scribe to you some curly-haired, big-tusked, fierce- 

3 



4 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

looking monster that lived on the earth thousands of 
years ago, for children (and some grown-up people too) 
are apt to think that things are wonderful only when 
they are big, which is not true. To show you what I 
mean: the beautiful six-sided wax cells which the bee 
makes are more curious than the rough hut which the 
chimpanzee — an African ape — ^piles together; and the 
tiny ants that keep plant-lice and milk them just as we 
keep cows to give us milk, and that catch the young 
of other ants to make slaves of them, are more wonder- 
ful than the huge and dull rhinoceros. It has been truly 
said that the brain of a worker ant is a more mar- 
vellous thing than the brain of a man. 

Well, it is the Story of Man, as the most wonderful 
living thing that this world has ever seen, or will ever 
see, that this little book is written to tell you. It is 
really the story of yourself, whereby I hope that you 
will learn, as far as we are able to find out, how it is 
that you are what you are, and where you are. 

Perhaps you have thought that there is nothing very 
wonderful in being where you are, or in possessing the 
good things which you enjoy; that people have always 
had them, or if not, that they had only to buy them 
at the shops; and that from the first day man lived on 
the earth he could cook his food, and have ices and 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

dessert after it; could dress himself well, write a good 
hand, live in a fine house, and build splendid churches 
with stained-glass windows, just as he does now-a-days. 

If you have thought so, you are wrong, and I will 
try to set you right, and show you that man was once 
wild and rough and savage, frightened at his own 
shadow, and still more frightened at the roar of thunder 
and the quiver of lightning, which he thought were the 
clapping of the wings and the flashing of the eyes of 
the angry Spirit as he came flying from the sun; and 
that it has taken many thousands of years for man to 
become as wise and skilful as we now see him to be. 

For just as you had to learn your A, B, C, to enable 
you to read at all, and just as you are learning things 
day by day which will help you to be useful when you 
grow up and are called upon to do your share of work 
in this world, where all idleness is harmful and selfish, 
so man had to begin learning, and to get at facts step 
by step along a toilsome road. 

And instead of being told, as we are told, w^hy a cer- 
tain thing is done, and which is the best way to do it, 
he had to find out these things for himself by making 
use of his brains, and had often to do the same thing 
over and over again, as you have sometimes with a 
hard lesson, before he was able to do it well. 



6 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Now there are several reasons for the behef that man 
was once wild and naked, and that only by slow de- 
grees did he become clothed and civiHzed. For in- 
stance, there have been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, 
and America, but especially in Europe, thousands of 
tools and weapons which were shaped and used by 
men ages upon ages ago, and which are just like the 
tools and weapons used by savages Hving now-a-days 
in various parts of the earth, among whom no traces of 
a civilized past can be found. 

Far across the wind-tossed seas, far away in such 
places as AustraKa, New Guinea, Borneo, and Ceylon, 
there Kve at this day creatures so wild that if you saw 
them you would scarcely believe that they were human 
beings and not wild animals in the shape of men, cover- 
ing themselves with mud, feeding on roots, and living 
in roughly-made huts or in woods under the shelter of 
trees. The word "savage" means one who lives in the 
woods. But they need not our pity, if they are as con- 
tent as a Vedda cave-dweller who said to a traveller: 
''It is pleasant for us to feel the rain beating on our 
shoulders, and good to go out and dig yams and come 
home wet and see the fire burning in the cave and sit 
round it." 

In telling you how the earliest men Kved I shall 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

want'ycTu to go back with me a great many years, even 
before the histories of different countries begin, to 
what are called ''pre-historic" times, because they were 
before history, as we understand that word. For men 
had to learn a great deal before they were clever enough 
to write histories of themselves; many, many centuries — 
and a century is a hundred years — passed away before 
they left any trace behind to tell us that they lived, 
other than the remains that I am about to describe, 
or broken pottery and scratching on bones and in cav- 
erns. So I shall take you past not only the Conquest, 
but past the day when in this England — then called 
Britain — the wild people dwelt in wattled huts, Hved on 
fruits and the flesh of wild animals, stained their bodies 
with the blue juice of the woad-plant, and worshipped 
trees and the sun and moon, even to the day when no 
sea flowed between England and France, and when 
a mass of land enclosing Great Britain and Ireland 
stretched into the Atlantic. 

For you must take now on trust what by and by you 
will be able to prove the truth of for yourself, when you 
wisely learn lessons from the rocks and hills themselves, 
instead of from books about them, that this worid, 
like the other worlds floating with it in the great star- 
filled spaces, is very, very old and everchanging, — so 



8 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 




Fig. I. — Map of Great Britain in the Old Stone Age 
(From Boyd Dawkin's Early Man in Britain) 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

old that men make all sorts of guesses about its birth- 
day; and that, unlike us who become wrinkled and 
grey, it keeps ever fresh and ever beautiful, brightened 
by the smiHng sunlight playing over its face. And now, 
without further preface, to my story. 



II 

MAN AND APES 

To make that story clear from the beginning, I will 
tell you: i. What is known about man's place among 
other animals; 2. About the very long time that he has 
lived on the earth, and 3. About the wanderings of the 
earliest races of men. Then we will pass on to talk 
about man's first wants and what tools and weapons 
he invented to supply them. Thus we reach the stage 
of Man the Worker. 

Next we have to learn how men grew from small 
groups into tribes and nations, and how they thus be- 
came more and more civilized. 

Then it will be interesting to learn what questions 
men, as they became less savage, asked about the world 
as their dwelling place and the source of all things, and 
about the heavens above them. Here we reach the 
stage of Man the Thinker in the highest sense of that 
word. 

Lastly we have to learn what answers to some of 

these questions civilized man has been clever enough to 

10 



MAN AND APES II 

find. Here we reach the stage of Man the Discoverer 
and Inventor. 

You will learn from other books the story of the 
beginnings of life on the earth, and how, by slow steps 
and through long ages, the simplest living things have 
given rise to milHons on milhons of different plants and 
animals. You also will learn that, unlike as these are 
to look at, all plants and animals are made up of 
myriads of cells formed of the same stuff. Those which 
resemble one another are classed together; the highest 
class of animals being called Mammals, because they 
suckle their young. (Lat. mamma, the female breast). 

Man and the tailless apes are ranked at the head of 
Mammals; the highest apes being the chimpanzee and 
gorilla, which are found in Africa, and the orang-utan 
and gibbon, which are found in the forests of Borneo, 
and Sumatra. Of these the orang-utan has the most 
manlike brain; the chimpanzee the most manlike skull; 
the gorilla the most manlike feet and hands, while the 
gibbon is the only one of the four that walks erect, 
doing that in a shambling sort of way. Man alone 
slowly acquired his erect position, which, added to his 
greater power of thumb as a grasping organ, was an 
enormous help to his attainment of the highest place 
among Mammals. Although the bones of men and 




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, MAN AND APES 13 

apes cannot be mistaken the one for the other, and 
although the brain of man makes a gulf between him 
and the apes which will never be filled, each animal, 
as this picture of their skeletons shows, is built on the 
same plan. And what near ''blood relations" they are 
is proved by the fact that the same kind of blood flows 
through the veins of each, which is not the case with 
man and the tailed monkeys. 

There is no doubt whatever that man and these big 
apes, and also the monkeys, sprung from a common 
ancestor. \\Tiat this ancestor was exactly hke we do 
not know, because none of his bones have been found; 
only those of animals whose skulls are partly apelike 
and partly manlike having, as yet, been discovered. 
But there can be little question that he was a wild, 
four-footed, hairy animal, li\ing in trees. Man has 
not come from an ape or a monkey, as some ignorant 
people think; each has descended from a common 
ancestor; not in a straight line, but in some such way 
as shown in the diagram on the following page. 



14 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



Civilized Man 



Baboons 



-Savage Man 



— Primitive Man 



Big Apes 



/Tailed Monkeys 



Common Ancestor 



Ill 

MAN'S GREAT AGE ON THE EARTH 

All that we can learn about this is supplied: i. By the 
few remains of man's skeleton which have been dug 
out of very old deposits; 2. By the numerous tools and 
weapons found in these, and 3. By pictures scratched 
on rock-faces and cavern-walls, or on pieces of bone 
and stone. 

Very few human bones have been found, because 
they are easily dissolved in the soil or in water, and, 
moreover, would often be eaten by wild beasts, espe- 
cially by hyenas, which, in far away ages, roamed over 
large parts of the world. Luckily, the hard framework 
of man's skull has prevented its perishing as quickly 
as the other bones, and the specimens that have been 
obtained are of very great value because they can be 
compared with the skulls of apes and of men living 
today, and the differences and Kkenesses noted. One 
of the oldest skulls comes from Java, an island once 
joined, with others near it, to the mainland of Asia, 
and not far from the places inhabited by the orang- 
es 



1 6 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

utan. It is of the greatest interest to us, because it 
seems to have belonged to an animal somewhere be- 
tween man and ape. Other skulls, more or less human 
in shape, have been unearthed in England (the most 
apehke was found at Piltdown in Sussex in 191 2), Ger- 
many, and other parts of Europe. None so old as 
these have been found in America. ' But our nearest 
relations, the tailless apes, are also not found there, 
which may be explained by the fact that the common 
ancestor of Man and Apes had its home probably in 
some part of Asia. 

That the skulls and other bones of the earHest known 
men are of enormous age is proved by the depth of the 
soil in which they have been found, and by that soil 
having remained unbroken into since the bones got 
there. You will learn from books on geology about the 
layers or strata (so-called from a Latin word meaning 
'' stretched out") of different rocks that make up what 
is known as the crust of the globe; (see p. 217) here, 
it must suffice to say that these rocks have been either 
fused together by heat or laid down by water. The 
water-laid rocks, in which alone the remains of plants 
and animals are found, reach to a total depth of twelve 
miles, and it is those nearest the surface, which are 
about four hundred feet in thickness, that yield the 



MAN'S GREAT AGE ON THE EARTH 17 

remains of man and of the animals closest akin to him. 
But though these uppermost deposits are less than one- 
fifteen-hundredth of the total fossil-yielding rocks in 
thickness, the sand and gravel and clay and chalk of 
which they are made up tell a tale of changes fiUing 
millions of years. At the time when man was spreading 
himself over the earth much of what was then land 
is now sea, and much of what was sea is now land. 
The British Isles were part of a continent that stretched 
far into the Atlantic Ocean; there was no English 
Channel and no Irish Sea, and waters now roll over 
what were then wide valleys wherein roamed rhinoc- 
eroses, hippopotamuses, ancestors of the elephant of 
today, sabre-toothed lions, cave-bears and other wild 
animals. There was no Adriatic Sea, and where the 
^Mediterranean now flows there were two large lakes, 
the land spaces between which united Europe and 
Africa at Gibraltar and Sicily. America was joined to 
Asia where the Behring Straits now flow, and to Europe 
by way of Greenland. 

Another proof of man's great age on the earth is in 
the remains found in limestone caverns in Western and 
Central Europe. All of these have so many features 
in common that a description of one wiU serve for the 
others. Leaving for a while some account of a few of 



1 8 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

the interesting pictures spoken of on p. 15 as found in 
some of these, I will describe the cave at Brixham, 
on the south coast of Devonshire, which was discov- 
ered more than fifty years ago through the falHng-in 
of a part of the roof. The floor is of stalagmite, or 
particles of lime, which have been brought down from 
the roof by the dropping of water, and become hard- 
ened into stone again. {Stalagmite comes from a Greek 
word which means a drop). In this floor, which is 
about one foot in thickness, were found bones of the 
reindeer and cave-bear. Below it is a red, loamy mass, 
thirteen feet thick in some parts, in which were buried 
flint flakes or knives, and bones of the mammoth or 
woolly-haired elephant. Beneath this is a bed of gravel, 
more than twenty feet thick, in which also flint flakes 
and some small bones were found. Altogether, there 
were more than thirty flints mingled with the bones of 
bears and woolly elephants in the same cave; and as 
these flints are known to have been chipped by the 
hand of man, it is not hard to prove that he lived in 
this country when those creatures roamed over it. 

But what proof have we, you ask, that the bones of 
these creatures are so very old? Apart from the fact 
that for many centuries no living mammoth has been 
seen, we have the finding of its bones buried at a goodly 



MAN'S GREAT AGE ON THE EARTH 



19 



depth; and as it is certain that no one would trouble to 
dig a grave to put them in, there must be some other 




Fig. 3. — The Mammoth 
(From SoUas' Ancient Hunters) 

cause for the mass of loam under which they are found. 
There are several ways by which the various bones 
may have got into the cave. The creatures to which 
they belonged may have died on the hillside, and their 
bones have been washed into the cave; or they may have 
served as food for man, since, as the crushed bones 
show, he very soon became a flesh-feeder; or they may 



20 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

have sought refuge and died in the cave, but, be this 
as it may, we have to account for the thirty-five feet 
of loam and gravel in which their remains are buried. 

The agent that thus covered them from view for 
long, long years, is that wonderful tool of nature which, 
before the day when no Hving thing was upon the earth, 
and ever since, has been cutting through rocks, opening 
the deep valleys, shaping the highest mountains, 
hollowing out the lowest caverns, and which is carrying 
the soil from one place to another to form new lands 
where now the sea rolls. It is water which carried that 
deposit into Brixham cavern and covered all the 
bones, and which, since the day that mammoth and 
bear and reindeer lived in Devonshire, has scooped out 
the surrounding valleys loo feet deeper. And although 
the time which water takes to deepen a channel, or eat 
out a cavern, depends upon the speed with which it 
flows, and on the amount of dissolving carbonic acid 
in it, you may judge that the quickest stream works 
slowly to those who watch it, when I tell you it is com- 
puted that the river Mississippi, flowing at its present 
rate, takes six thousand years to scoop out its valley 
one foot lower! So, with proof heaped upon proof 
before us, there can be no doubt that man's age on the 
earth cannot be measured by years. 



IV 

WANDERINGS OF EARLY RACES 

I HAVE told you that man first appeared in some 
warm forest-dad part of the globe, perhaps that wherein 
the great apes now dwell, as Southern Asia, but as to 
this we may never be certain. We know that in the 
long course of time his descendants slowly overspread 
the earth. And as the cKmate in which people live 
affects the colour of their skins, so the progress of any 
race, as well as the kind of life which they live, depend 
very much on the land they dwell in. This goes far to 
explain the marked unlikenesses between the races of 
mankind, why some have remained to this day wild 
and savage, while others have become civilized. 

Although we talk of man as doing this or that, we 
must apply that name, at the remote time with which 
I am dealing, to animals not then wholly human, be- 
cause in many ways like the apes. I have already 
spoken of remains which have lately come to light and 
which show that there were several kinds of half-human 
creatures, as well as of manlike apes. By steps that 
we cannot clearly trace these spread themselves over 

21 



22 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

the earth at a time when the climate was very different 
from what it is now. That was in what is named the 
later Tertiary Age of the globe's history, when the 
remains of plants and animals prove that the climate 
was so very hot in the far north that evergreens, palms 
and waterlihes were abundant there. Sturdy, strong- 
limbed, and very hairy, the men of that time needed 
no clothing; plenty of fruits and berries suppHed their 
wants, so that, like most dwellers in hot countries, 
they were chiefly plant-feeders. But they had to keep 
together on guard against wild beasts, huge rhinoc- 
eroses, hyenas, tigers, and ancestors of the elephant and 
horse, and to make use of stone weapons, then of 
rudest and roughest shape, and of wooden clubs, against 
them. 

This warm climate was followed by several intervals 
of severe cold, known as the Ice Ages, when a large 
part of the northern half of the globe was frozen over. 
The creatures that could hve only in a hot climate 
perished or were driven southwards; man could no 
longer subsist on plants alone, and was driven to hunt 
and kill and, if he had discovered how to make fire, 
cook the wild animals. Cliief among these were the 
mammoth and horse, thousands of bones of which, with 
those of other animals, mixed with numerous stone 



WANDERINGS OF EARLY RACES 23 

implements, have been found in one place alone in 
Moravia. Such an addition to his food supply would 
enable him to extend his wanderings. And some 
split human bones that have been found seem to show 
that man was a cannibal in pre-historic times, as, in 
some parts of the world, he has been, for various rea- 
sons, one ever since. 

We may picture to ourselves great hordes of manlike 
creatures and, perchance, of manHke apes also, pouring 
forth, driven by food impulse, from a common centre, 
some by way of Southern Arabia into Africa, where we 
find gorillas and chimpanzees as well as negroes; others 
wandering southwards by land routes now under the 
ocean to Australia and Tasmania; while vast numbers 
spread themselves over Asia, or passed westward 
into Europe, leaving the orang-utans and gibbons 
on a side track that these creatures have kept, re- 
maining apes for ever. From Asia some reached 
America, and thus in the course of hundreds of thou- 
sands of years, the world was peopled, and, in the long 
course of time, spKt-up into numerous races. Man, 
we may say, becomes truly man to us when he reaches 
what is called the Old Stone Age, from which we pass 
without any break through the New Stone Age and 
the Ages of Metals to the present day. 



24 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Is it not a wonderful thing that of the fifteen hun- 
dred millions of people who it is reckoned make up the 
population of the world, there are no two faces exactly 
alike? To us every Chinaman with his yellow com- 
plexion, almond eyes, and nearly hairless face, looks the 
same, as does every negro, with his flat nose, wide 
nostrils, and thick lips. But every Chinaman knows 
every other Chinaman by his different features, and 
likewise every negro knows every other negro, just as 
the quick eye of a shepherd can tell one sheep from 
another in a large flock, and a gardener tell each 
hyacinth among a thousand bulbs. 

Nearly all the world's peoples are more or less mixed, 
but they retain certain characters, due to their hair 
and the colour of their skins. These mark them off into 
four great divisions, namely: 

I. The Caucasian; white or tawny skinned, with 
smooth or wavy hair. These include nearly all 
Europeans, Americans and many Asiatics, as 
Hindus and Persians; also Armenians and Jews. 
2. The Mongolian; yellow-skinned with lank, straight, 
and coarse black hair. These include the 
Chinese, Japanese, and numerous peoples in 
Asia; also Turks, Finns, and Magyars or Hun- 
garians. 



WANDERINGS OF EARLY RACES 25 

3. The American; red-skinned, with hair like the 

MongoHan. These include the Red Indians of 

North America, and the Indians of S. America. 

4. The Negro; black-skinned, with woolly or frizzly 

hair. These include all the black races in Africa, 

America, and wherever else living. Older than all 

these are, perhaps, the natives of Australia. 

Although what is known as race-feeling will for ever 

keep black and white and yellow people more or less 

apart, men are the same in body and mind all the world 

over, the differences being in the degree in which some 

are stronger and more clever than others. To know 

this is to engender kindly feelings towards our fellow 

creatures, and, with what we also know about our 

kinship with animals, to extend our sympathy to them, 

the more so that they are dumb and often helpless, so 

that in the words of a poet who taught the oneness of 

all hving things before science had proved it, we may 

Never blend our pleasure or our pride 
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. 



MAN'S FIRST WANTS 

These are, A. food, B. warmth, and C. shelter. 

A. Food is the chiefest of the three, because, hke 
every other living thing, whether plant or animal, man 
must eat or die. In the last chapter I said a little 
about him as at first a plant-feeder, and then becoming 
also a flesh-feeder; the animal food being obtained by 
hunting and fishing, and, where men ate one another, 
by fighting. We may learn from the lowest savages, 
of today, the natives of AustraHa, much about primitive 
man. These savages neither till the soil nor raise crops, 
but feed on seeds, roots, fruits, beetles, grasshoppers, 
ants, grubs, emus and kangaroos, and, in some parts, on 
human flesh. All these things have been the food of 
man from his distant past. He has fought with, and 
killed, other men, whereby the weaker have become 
extinct, and he has eaten them, not only because hu- 
man flesh is tasty, but because of the feeHng of revenge 
which fighting kindles, and also because of the wide- 
spread belief among savages that the eater takes into 

himself the quaKties of the eaten. For example, among 

26 



MAN'S FIRST WANTS 27 

the Hurons of North America if an enemy had shown 
courage his heart was roasted, cut into small pieces, and 
given to the young men and boys to eat, while, as I 
shall tell you later, the flesh of human beings who are 
sacrificed to the gods, is eaten. There was a tribe in 
South America which not only devoured the dead, but 
ground their bones to drink in liquor, for they said it 
was better to be inside a friend than to be swallowed up 
by the cold earth. This is not pleasant to write about, 
but the truth has to be told if the story of savage w^ays 
of Hfe is to be complete. One thing for reading aright 
the history of man must never be forgotten. It is 
this : I . That his struggle for food is a struggle for Hfe, 
and 2. That the men who stuck closest together won 
in that struggle. 

I. All Hving things multiply faster than their food- 
supply, therefore some have to go short; hence the 
fight between every plant and every animal all the 
world over, in which the weaker are beaten. One 
among many proofs that man was a fighting animal 
from the outset is in the finding of the broken bones of 
two races mingled together at a place called Kaprina, in 
Hungary. Moreover, so quickly does everything multi- 
ply that if all the seeds that a single plant produces, 
and if all the eggs in the roe of a codfish (there are nine 



2S THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

millions),, came to maturity, the whole earth would 
soon be covered by the plants, and the sea would be- 
come a solid block of codhsh. But as only a very few 

of the seeds and a very few of the eggs survive to 
produce their kind, the balance between h\ing things 
and their surroundings is not upset. 

2. '"'Union is strength'" is an old and true sa}-ing. 
Some tiny creatures, as the ant and bee. acted on that 
long before man did. building up a social life which is 
one of the marvels of the insect world. All other 
animals, in the degree that they keep together, are the 
higher in the scale of life, and succeed the better; for 
as a great Roman Emperor said. *"That which is not 
good for the swarm is not good for the bee." And it 
was because the creatures from whom man sprang were 
banded together that the strongest groups among them 
won in the struggle for food, which as I have said, was 
the strues^le for life. -Aad more than this. The strons;- 
est came to the front as leaders in battle; the -^dsest 
came to the front N^ith good cotmsel. to quell disputes 
inside the group, and to demise laws which were for 
the conmion good, each ui their ovni way doing some- 
thing to help unity, \^ithout wliich no tribe or nation 
can sur\dve in the never-ending life-struggle. 

B. Warmth. There are a grreat manv curious stories 



MAN'S FIRST WANTS 29 

which give an account of the way in which fire was 
first obtained, but they are a part of that guess-work 
about things which is ever going on, and which some- 
times brings us nearer the truth. Men have ever been 
quick to make use of what we call their ''wits" (which 
word comes from an old word used by our forefathers, 
meaning understanding) or their common sense, and 




Fig. 4. — Bushmen Drilling Fire 
(From Tylor's Anthropology) 

common sense taught them that fire was to be had by 
rubbing two pieces of wood together. In making their 
flint weapons sparks would fly, but they saw that the 
flints themselves could not be set on fire. When they 
felt cold, they rubbed their hands together, and warmth 
came to them. They tried what could be done by running 
a blunt-pointed stick along a groove of its own making in 
another piece of wood, and they found first that each got 
heated, then that sparks flew, then that flame burst out. 



30 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Travellers tell us that savages can produce fire in a 
few seconds in this way, and that in the northern seas 
of Europe the islanders find a bird so fat and greasy 
that all they have to do is to draw a wick through its 
body, and on fighting it the bird burns away as a 
candle does! And fire was as useful in the days I am 
writing about as travellers find it now in giving pro- 
tection from the wild beasts at night, so that man had 
many reasons for keeping his fire always burning by 
heaping on it the wood which was ready to his hand 
in such abundance. 

This leads me to say a little about cooking and 
pottery. At first men ate flesh raw, as some tribes do 
now, but afterwards they would learn to cook it, and 
this they did by simply putting the meat direct to the 
fire. Afterwards they would dig a hole and fine it with 
the hard hide of the slain animal, fill it with water, put 
the meat in, and then make stones red-hot, dropping 
them in until the water was hot enough and the meat 
was cooked. Then a still better way would be found 
out of boifing the food in vessels set over the fire, 
which were daubed outside with clay to prevent their 
being burnt. Thus men learnt — seeing how hard fire 
made the clay — to use it by itself and to shape it into 
rough pots, which were dried either in the sun or before 



MAN'S FIRST WANTS 31 

the fire, and hence arose the beautiful art of making 
earthenware. 

C. Shelter. Primitive man, like savages in hot 
climates today, went naked: only as he lived in colder 
parts would he need clothing, and for this he would use 
the skins of animals, which were sewn together with 
bone needles, sinews being used for thread. As for his 
dwellings, these also would depend on the climate, and 
on his movements from one place to another. Some 
rude shelter of boughs and bushes to screen him from 
the wind sufficed him; or, as among the Eskimos, skins 
stretched on bones, or, like the Bushmen when out 
hunting, he would bury himself in the sand. Or a hole 
would be dug in the ground, a wall being made of the 
earth which was thrown out, and a covering of tree- 
boughs put over it; or rude dwellings would be perched 
on tree-tops. Sometimes, where blocks of stone were 
found l>^ng loosely, they were placed together, and 
a rude, strong kind of hut made in this way. And 
wherever theire were over-hanging rocks or hollow trees 
and caves, these would be used as ready-made shelters. 
There have been found in lakes, especially in Switzer- 
land, remains of houses which were built upon piles 
driven into the bed of the lake. The shape of many of 
these piles shows that they were cut with stone hatch- 



32 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 




Fig. 5. — Tree Duxllings in South India 
(From Ratzel's Eistcry oj Mankind) 



MAN'S FIRST WANTS 33 

ets, which proves that people Hved in this curious fash- 
ion in very earh' times. They did so to be freer from 
the attacks of their enemies and of wild beasts. 

These lake-dwellers, as they are called (and not only 
did they Hve thus in those remote times and in later 
ages, but there are people living in the same manner in 
the East Indies, Central Africa, Borneo and other 
places at this day), made good use of their stone hatch- 
ets, for they not only cut down trees, but killed such 
animals — and very fierce they were — as the bear, wolf, 
and wild boar. They had learned to fish with nets 
made of flax, which they floated with buoys of bark, 
and sank with stone weights. 

Besides what we know about the dwellings of men 
in early times, there have been found on the shores of 
Denmark, Scotland, and elsew^here, enormous heaps of 
what are called "kitchen-middens." These were really 
the feeding-places of the people who lived on or about 
those coasts, and they are made up of piles of shells, 
largely those of the oyster, mussel, periwinkle, etc. on 
which they fed. With these there have also been found 
the bones of stags and other animals, and also of birds, 
as well as flint knives and other things. 

I said at starting that the three things which men 
would first need were food, warmth, and shelter, and 



34 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 




MAN'S FIRST WANTS 35 

ha\ing told you how these were procured, you are per- 
haps wondering how, since even animals understand 
one another by their cries and movements, people so 
very savage spoke to each other and what words they 
used. Tliis we shall never know, but we may be sure 
that the}' had some way of making their thoughts 
known one to another, and that they learned to speak 
and write and count little by little, just as they learned 
everything else. They had some idea of drawing, for 
bones and pieces of slate have been found with rough 
sketches of man, mammoth, reindeer, and other an- 
imals scratched on them. These old-world pictures, 
some of the most striking of which are found on the 
walls of caverns, witness to the truth that man is 
greater than brutes in this as in other things, since no 
brute has yet been known to draw a picture, invent an 
alphabet, or learn how to make a fire. 

But I shall have something to say about speaking 
and writing later on. 



36 



THE CHILDHOOD OP THE WORLD 




Fig. 7. — ExGEAViXG or a Z^Lammoth, Les Combarelles Cave.. France 




Fig. S. — ExGRA\TS"G or a Horse, Les Combarelles 



* Figs. 7 to 12 are reproduced by permission of Messrs. Masson & 

Cie from '' U Anthropologie ." 



MAN'S FIRST WANTS 



37 




Fig. g. — ^Monstrous Forms, A. from cave at Gargas, France; B. C. 
D. from Altamira, Spain 




Fig. io. — Group of Red Animals on a Rock at Cogul 

Stag surrounded by hinds; to the right an ox and elk. Behind the ox is 

a black head of a hind of earlier date 



38 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 





A B 

Fig. II. — Paintings on a Rock at Cogul 
A. A man attacking a stag; B. A stag which he has killed * 




Fig. 12. — Three Figures of Women 
From cave at Cogul, Spain * 



*Figs. 7 to 12 are reproduced by permission of Messrs. Masson & 
Cie from " U Anthropologie." 



VI 

MAN'S FIRST TOOLS AND WEAPONS 

There are few things which the wonderfully made 
hand of man cannot do, but it must have tools with 
which to work. A man cannot cut wood or meat with- 
out a knife, he cannot write without a pen, or drive in 
nails without a hammer. He might wish to eat of the 
fish that glided past him in the river, but he must 
have net or spear to catch it; he wanted to kill and 
eat the reindeer that bounded past him into the depths 
of the forest; but he was helpless without weapons. 

One of the first things which he needed was therefore 
some sharp-edged tool, which must of course be harder 
than the thing he wanted to cut. He knew nothing of 
the metals, although some of them, not the hardest, lay 
near the surface, and he therefore made use of the 
stones lying about. Men of science (that is, men who 
know, because "science" comes from a word meaning 
to know) have given the name "Old Stone Age" to that 
far-ofif time when stone, and such things as bone, wood, 
and horn, were made into various kinds of tools. 

39 



40 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



Flints were chiefly used, because they were plentiful in 
many parts and of handy size, and because, by a sharp 
blow, flakes like the blade of a knife could be broken 
off them. Other flints were shaped to a point, or into 





^V 



M 


f^\ 


' i 


1 

i 


y 


1 

I. I'l 



Fig. 13. — Flint Flakes 

a. Old Stone Age; b. Modern Australia; c. Ancient Denmark 

(From Tylor's Anthropology) 

rough sorts of hammers, by chipping with a rounded 
pebble or other stone. Many of them are in form Hke 
an almond, having a cutting edge all round. Their 
sizes differ, some being six inches long and three inches 
wide, while others are rather larger. 

These oldest stone weapons, unsharpened by grinding 



MAN'S FIRST TOOLS AND WEAPONS 41 



and unpolished, in making which man showed increas- 
ing skill, have been found lying on the surface, and 
also, in large numbers, chiefly in places known as the 
''drift;" that is, buried underneath the gravel, clay, 






Fig. 14.— Old Stone Age Flint Picks or Hatchets 
(From Tylor's Anthropology) 

and stones which have been drifted or carried down by 
the rivers in their ceaseless flow. 

As I have already told you, in these early days of 
man's history huge wild animals shared the habitable 
world with him. There were mammoths, rhinoceroses, 
hippopotamuses; there were cave-lions, cave-bears, 
cave-hyenas, and other beasts of a much larger size 
than are found at this day. 

That they lived at the same time that man did is 
certain, because under layers of earth their bones have 



42 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

been found side by side with his, and with the weapons 
which he made. 

Somewhat better-shaped tools and weapons have 
been found chiefly in caves, which, as aheady told 
you (p. 20) were hollowed out by water ages before 
any living thing dwelt here. These caves were used 
by men not only to live in, but also to bury their 
dead in; and from the different remains found in and 
near them, it is thought that feasts were held when the 
burials took place, and that food and weapons were 
put with the dead because their friends thought that 
such things were needed by them as they travelled the 
long journey to another world. 

The great help to man of the weapons I have de- 
scribed against the attacks of wild animals is easily 
understood, for with them he was able not only to 
defend himself and his family, but to kill the huge 
creatures, and thus get food for the mouths that were 
always increasing in number. That he did kill and eat 
them, and clothe himself in their skins and make their 
bones into deadly weapons, is certain. 

It is surprising to think how many things the first 
men had to do with the stones which they roughly 
shaped. They cut down trees, and with the aid of fire 
scooped them out to make canoes, for it was plain to 



MAN'S FIRST TOOLS AND WEAPONS 



43 



them that wood floated on the water; they killed their 

food, cut it up, broke the bones to suck out the marrow; 

cracked sea-shells to get out the animals inside them, 

besides doing many other things with w^hat seem to us 

blunt and clumsy tools. 

Following the Old Stone Age, when the waters had 

cut a wide channel between Britain and Europe, there 

9 




Fig. 15. — New Stone Age Implements 
a. Stone celt or hatchet; h. flint spearhead; c. scraper; d. arrowheads; 
e. flint flake knives; /. core from which flint flakes are taken off; 
g. flint awl; h. flint saw; i. stone hammer head 
(From Tylor's Anthropology) 

appear races who had passed from the savage state, 
makers of well-formed spearheads, daggers, adzes, 
hatchets, beautifully shaped barbed arrowheads, and 
other stone tools and weapons which were ground to a 
sharp edge and polished. These races are called men 
of the "New Stone Age," and it would appear that the 
older races, who were less able to defend themselves, 
were driven northwards by them. 



44 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



While we are talking about this New Stone Age I 
should tell you that there are found in different parts 
of the world stone ruins of very great age and various 
shapes and sizes, some built of pillars covered -^dth a 




Fig. i6. — Stoxe Axes, etc. 
a. Polished stone (England); b. pebble ground to edge and mounted in 
twig handle (Brazil); c. celt fixed in wooden club (Ireland); 
d. stone axe bored for handle (England); e. stone axe (modern 
PoljTiesia) 

flat stone for roof, others built to a point like the great 

pyramids of Eg}'pt. 

These, Hke the caves, were used to bury the dead in, 

but sometimes they were built to mark the place where 

some great deed was done, or where something very 

wonderful had happened. The heaping together of 

stones was an easy and lasting way of keeping such 

things fresh in men's minds, just as we erect statues 



MAN'S FIRST TOOLS AND WEAPONS 



45 



in honour of our great men, or raise something in 
memory of their acts of bravery, nobleness, or charity. 
When built as tombs for the dead, their importance 




Fig. 17. — Stonehenge as it Probably Was 
(From Boyd Davvkin's Early Man in Britain) 

depended upon the rank of the person to be laid within 
them. The numerous circles of standing stones — Kke 
that at Stonehenge — are thought to have been built for 
worship of some kind. But more about these later on. 



VII 

DISCOVERY OF METALS 

In course of time some man, wiser than his fellows 
in virtue of his quicker eye and more active brain, 
discovered the metals which the earth contained. 
When we think about the thousand different uses to 
which these are put — how without them no ship big 
enough and strong enough to cross the ocean could 
have been built, or steam-engine to speed us along 
constructed — we learn how enormous is their value to 
us. It is certain that if man had never discovered them 
he would have remained in a savage, or, at least, a 
barbarous state. 

Through all the story of his progress we see that he 
never went to the storehouse of the earth in vain. 
Therein were treasured up for him the metals which 
he needed when stone was found to be too blunt and 
soft for the work he wished to do; therein, formed 
millions of years ago, were the vast coal-beds which 
were laid open to supply the cosy fires when wood grew 
scarce; therein were the great and it would seem ex- 

46 



DISCOVERY OF METALS 47 

haustless supplies of oil that give us light by night, 
and that are now largely taking the place of steam to 
speed our great ships. Year after year brings the story 
of something new and wonderful of which earth has 
kept the secret until the skill of man finds it out. 

Gold, which means the yellow, bright metal (from 
Anglo Saxon giilr, yellow), was most likely the first 
to be used by man. Its glitter would attract his eye, 
as it is found in the sands of rivers, and sparkles on the 
rocks containing it. It has to be mixed with another 
metal to be made hard enough for general use; but in 
its native state would be easily shaped into ornaments. 
Savage and polished people are aHke in this love of 
ornament. Necklaces of shells and amber made in the 
Stone Age have been found; and to this day savages 
think of decoration before dress. One very common 
way of making themselves smart, as they think, is by 
marking their face, body, and Hmbs with curved lines, 
made with a pointed instrument, fiUing in the marks 
with colour. This is called tattooing. If this shows 
that people have in all places and times loved to look 
fine, although they have gone through pain and dis- 
comfort as the price, it also shows that the love of 
what is beautiful, or of what is thought to be beautiful, 
is possessed by man alone. It is true that animals. 



48 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

especially insects, have ^'an eye for colour," and that 
the gorgeous plumage of male birds attracts their mates, 
but these are due to causes about which you T^dll learn 
in books on natural history. 

Copper is a metal which came into early use. Like 
gold, it is often found unmixed T^dth anything else, and 
its softness enables it to be worked into various shapes. 
\Miere it was scarce, and tin could be had. hre was 
made use of to melt and mix the two together, forming 
the pretty, hard,, and useful metal caUed bronze. By 
pouring the molten mass into a mould of stone or sand, 
weapons of the shape wanted would be made. 

The age when the metals I have named were used is 
called the ''Age of Bronze.*' A very long time passed 
before iron was smelted, that is. melted and got away 
from the ore (or vein running through the rock) with 
which it is found, because this is very hard work, and 
needs more skill than men had then; but when they 
succeeded in smelting and moulding it, it took the 
place of bronze for making spearheads, swords, hatch- 
ets, etc., bronze being used for the handles and for 
ornaments, many of which — such as earrings, bracelets, 
and hair-pins — have been found among the ruins in the 
Swiss lakes. 

Silver and lead were used later still. 



DISCOVERY OF METALS 49 

You have thus far learnt that by finding in river 
beds, caverns, and elsewhere, various tools, weapons, 
ornaments, and other remains, some of them at great 
depth, and all without doubt made by man, it is known 
that he must have Hved many, many thousands of 
years before we have any records of him in histories 
written on papyrus (which was the reed from which the 
ancients made their paper — hence the name "paper"), 
or painted on the walls of tombs. 

By way of marking the steps of man's progress his 
early history is divided into periods, named after the 
things used in them, as thus: — 

1. The Paleolithic (Greek palaios, old, and lithos, a 

stone) or Old Stone Age. 

2. The Neolithic (Greek neos, new, and lithos, a 

stone) or New Stone Age. 

3. The Age of Bronze. 

4. The Age of Iron. 

Since this book was first written, not only have 
enormous numbers of the rudest-shaped stone imple- 
ments been found in different and distant parts of the 
world, but, what is more important, the depths of the 
soil from which they have been dug up show that man 
w^as living in Europe before what is known as the Great 
Ice Age, when the northern hemisphere was covered 



50 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

with ice. That may have been more than a million 
years ago, and to this we have to add the time that 
passed between his arrival in Europe and lea\ing his 
first home. The ''Old Stone Age" covers so vast a 
time that it has been dix^ided into three periods named 
after the animals that were then most nmnerous: 

1. The Hippopotamus, when the climate was warm. 

2. The iMammoth, when the climate was damp. 

3. The Reindeer, when the climate was cold and dry. 
The most interesting of these is the Reindeer, because 
that is the time when cave-dwellers drew their clever 
pictures of the animals then probably most abundant. 
Then set in the great changes in land, sea, and climate 
and in the plants and animals which bring us to the 
New Stone Age. 

From what has thus far been told you we learn that 
the number of years that passed between the chipping 
of the earHest and rudest flints and the shaping of the 
first bronze weapons is not known. The Table at the 
end of this chapter gives only a rough idea of the 
length of the earher periods. We are sure that men 
used stone before they used bronze and iron, and that 
some tribes were in the Stone Age when other tribes 
had found out the value of metals, just as there are 
savages in New Guinea and other places who are still 



DISCOVERY OF METALS 51 

stone-using, or who have known about metal tools and 
weapons only through white men bringing them. All 
the Ages overlap and run into each other Hke the 
colours of the rainbow. 

For example, although some of the lake-dwellings, 
about which I have told you, were built by men in the 
New Stone Age, a very large number belong to the 
Bronze Age; and the relics which have been brought to 
light show how decided w^as the progress which man 
had made. The lake-dwellers had learned to cultivate 
w^heat, to store up food for winter use, to weave gar- 
ments of flax, and to tame the most useful animals, 
such as the horse, the sheep, and the goat. Man had 
long before this found out what a valuable creature the 
dog is, for the lowest tribes who lived on the northern 
sea-coasts have left proof of this in the bones found 
among the shell heaps. By the taming of the horse he 
secured the animal that has been of the greatest help 
in his progress from savagery, and that progress took 
one of the biggest strides possible when some shrewd 
man, perhaps seeing the idea in a rolHng log, invented 
the wheel, and, after that, the axle. 

In what is known as the Age of Iron very rapid 
progress was mxade; and while the variety of pottery, 
the casting of bronze coins, the discovery of glass, and 



52 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE Y^'ORLD 



a crowd of other new inventions show what great 
advance was made in the things man used, the}' show 
also h;~ fas: man himself wsls rising from a low state. 
He progressed more in a few centuries than he had 
hitherto in many thousands of years. 



TABLE OF STAGES OF CLXTLTIE 

Li:er Iron Age About ace B. C. to the present time. 

Eir:;.- Ire- Age From abou: i.ccc B. C. 

F::::rt ,^r7 " " 2,500 B. C. 

C : I ; er - .Zr '■ '' 3,000 B. C. 

Xe~ S:or.c Age Lasted about 15,000 to 25.000 years. 

Oli Stone Age of chipped ) j^^^,^ ^^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ 
tcoL. and weapons; cave ■ ^^ . ^ y^ millmT, yeais. 



Older Stone Age of beaked 
keel-shaped, and of other 
very rough implements, 

C22!ed Eclith? ^Greek evs, 
cavrn, ana ... :j5, stone). 



Lasted about two million years. 



VIII 

MANKIND AS HUNTERS, SHEPHERDS, 
Fx\RMERS, TRADERS AND SAILORS 

From being a roving, wild, long-haired savage, 
gnawing roots, or crouching behind rock or tree to 
pounce upon his prey, uncertain each morning whether 
night would not set in before he could get enough to 
eat, man became keen enough to learn the habits and 
the haunts of animals and to place them at his mercy 
b}' the skill ^\dth which he could hurl the big stone 
weapons, throw the spears tipped with flint or bone, 
and, with his bow, speed the deadly arrowheads. 
Travellers tell us that the hunting skill of savage races 
shows a cleverness which is marvellous. They know 
the track, and cry, and habits of every animal in their 
country; they will track the opossum by its claw- 
marks on a tree trunk; put grass on their heads to 
conceal themselves, then creep or swim up to ducks 
and puU them one by one under water and break their 
necks; find snakes by watching the movements of the 
butcher birds that are always near these reptiles; catch 
a bee and stick a piece of feather on it, let it go, and 

53 



54 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

then follow its flight until the hive and honey are 
found; use one fish to catch another; tell a turtle nest 
with fresh eggs from, one with stale eggs by the appear- 
ance of the sand; in short, find food where a white man 
would starve to death. So clever a;re they at tracking, 
that they can not only follow an animal to its hiding- 
place, but even know the footprints of every other 
member of the tribe. 

One of the many things that set us wondering is how 
and when man domesticated, or made house-friends of, 
as we may say (Lat. domus, a house), the creatures 
that ran wild and savage. An3rway, some part of man- 
kind, finding how useful certain animals were for the 
milk and flesh which they gave as food, and for the 
skins, especially of their young ones, which could be 
made iiito soft clothing, had learnt to tame and gather 
them into flocks and herds, moving with them from 
place to place wherever most grass and herbs could be 
had. These men were the first shepherds or herdsmen, 
living a nomad (which means wandering) fife, dwelling 
in tents because they could be easily removed. 

While some clung to the shepherd's or herdsman's 
life, others passed in the slow course of time to a more 
settled state, becoming farmers or tillers of the earth. 
(The word earth is said to mean the ploughed.) 



MANKIND AS HUNTERS, SHEPHERDS, ETC. 55 

At an early stage man had found out what seeds, 
roots, and fruits could be eaten, and had noticed that 
when seeds were put into the soil they would grow. 
So by steps that can no longer be traced, he learned to 
till the ground and store his supply of corn and maize 
and rice and all other food-yielding plants. Wherever 
tillage is found among savages today, the implements 
of the primitive husbandman are still used. Pointed 
sticks serve the purpose of digging up roots, and of a 
hoe in turning the soil. From the hoe came the inven- 
tion of the plough, and the primitive spade is a flat 
bladed piece of wood. 

In out-of-the-way places in ci\'ilized countries such 
rude implements are still used by the peasantry. For 
the knowledge of metals as implements, compared with 
these, is late. As farming caused men to settle in 
one place, they would not be content with such rude 
dwelUngs as sufficed in the Stone Age, or with tents, 
like the nomads, but would have their houses well built, 
with stables and barns in which to lodge their cattle 
and store up their corn. 

All the sunny days would be wanted for their field 
work, and they would therefore be glad to employ 
others who could build their houses and make their 
tools. Thus, one after another, different trades would 



56 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

arise and be carried on, which would bring people 
together for mutual help and gain; thus houses w^ould 
multiply into villages, villages would become towns, 
and towns would grow into cities. 

The first sailor was the man who sat on a floating 
tree-trunk, paddled with his hands, or waved a leafy 
bough as a sail. The next step was, by the help of a 
stone axe and fire, to hollow out the trunk (our word 
''ship" comes from the Greek ''skapto," to dig.) So, 
by slow stages, man advanced in the beautiful art of 
shipbuilding; the canoe being the remote forerunner 
of the splendid liner. For many ages he dared not 
venture upon the wide ocean, but crept along the 
coast, sailing at night by the stars, whose places he 
watched, and not till the compass, with its needle 
always pointing to the north, was invented, would he 
venture out of sight of land. Some time passed before 
sailors would use the compass; they thought that so 
uncanny a thing was moved by some evil spirit. 

The different classes of people would unite together 
for protection against their enemies, and either all 
would learn the art of war, or would select some of the 
bravest and strongest among them to become the army 
to defend the land. Some one man, the best and 
ambles t they could find, would be chosen to carry out 



MANKIND AS HUNTERS, SHEPHERDS, ETC. 57 

the laws which the people agreed to make for the 
well-being of all. 

We have seen that on man's first entrance into life 
he found it one continued battle against forces of all 
kinds, and the only law that ruled was the law of 
might. Besides abihty to defend himself by sheer force 
or cunning, man possessed the power of injuring and 
of doing wanton cruelty and mischief for its own sake, 
and of this power all history shows us he made sad use. 
Lower in this than the beast which slays to satisfy 
its hunger, man killed his fellow-man to satisfy his 
lawless ambition, and committed ravages which cen- 
turies of labour have been unable to repair. Hence 
in early as well as in later times, the bad passions and 
jealousies of men broke out and caused the desolating 
wars which have darkened so many bright spots in 
this w^orld. It is certain that the tillers of the soil and 
the dwellers in towns would be more inclined to a 
peaceful and quiet Hfe than the roving tribes, or than 
the chieftains who, with their followers and herds and 
flocks, would often seek to gain by force what they 
coveted. 

Not that these were always to blame, but they 
would be the more likely of the two to "pick a quarrel.'' 
Disputes arose between them about the ownership of 



58 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

the land; the nomads, who loved the lazy ease of a 
pastoral life more than the hard work of tool-making 
or house-building, would want to share some of the 
good fruits which the farmers were making the earth 
to yield, or some of the bright, sharp-edged weapons 
which the metal-workers were moulding, and in various 
ways ^'bad blood,'^ as people call it, would be stirred, 
which would end in fighting. The stronger would 
conquer the weaker, seize upon or lay waste their land, 
and make slaves of such of the prisoners as they 
thought it worth while to spare. It was an age, hke 
many ages since, when no tender feehngs ruled in the 
heart of man, but when the "golden rule" was not; 
and the harsh, stern law was in force 

"That they shall take who have the power, 
And they shall keep who can." 

But wars do not last for ever, and men would find 
that it was after all better to live in friendship and 
peace. So they would trade together; the earth would 
yield the farmer more food than he needed, and he 
would be glad to barter with it, giving some of it to 
the herdsman in exchange for cattle, and to the tool- 
maker in exchange for tools, each of whom would be 
very glad to trade with him. 



MANKIND AS HUNTERS, SHEPHERDS, ETC. 59 

Then, as intercourse grew, it was found very awk- 
ward and cumbersome to carry things from place to 
place, especially if they were now and then not very 
much wanted, and people would agree to make use of 
something which was handy to carry, steady in value, 
and that did not spoil by keeping. So, whenever they 
could, men fixed upon pieces of metal, first casting 
bronze into coins and then using gold and silver, which, 
being scarcer than other metals, are worth more. We 
learn from the paintings at Thebes, in Egypt, and from 
other sources of ancient history, that gold and silver 
were counted as wealth in early times. Abraham is 
said in the Book of Genesis to have been "very rich 
in cattle, in silver, and in gold." The word "pecu- 
niary," used in speaking of a man's riches, comes from 
the Latin word pecus, which means cattle, and shows 
that formerly a man's wealth was sometimes reckoned 
by the cattle he had. And when copper was used as 
money instead of cattle, it was stamped with images of 
cows or sheep. Our word "fee" comes from an Anglo- 
Saxon word meaning both "money" and "cattle," 
wherein is another of the proofs of the meaning that 
words hold. They have been called, with truth, fossil 
history, and fossil poetry; when you break them up, 
they reveal, Hke fossils, the story of their origin. 



IX 

L.\XGUAGE 

The begmninga of language lie in man's needs to 
make known Ms thoughts and wants to his fellow-men. 
Animals utter love-calls and danger-cries to one an- 
other, which they understand, and so far they have a 
language, but man alone has the power of articulate 
speech, that is. of uttering distinct letters, and the 
syllables which make up words. Our brains are the 
organs of our minds _. and our sense-organs are the 
wires which telegraph to our brains all that we see and 
hear and feel. And in one part of our brain is the 
'''speech centre.'"' which is not found in the ape nor in 
dumb idiots. It is not fully formed in babies till they 
are a year old. as we may guess from their being unable 
to talk. It was vrhen man uttered the hrst articulate 
word about anything that the gull which separates 
him from all other animals was fixed. Like aught else 
that he has invented or improved, language has grown 
from simple materials; from a few sounds there have 

been developed the rich and varied languages of past 

60 



LANGUAGE 6i 

and present civilized peoples. When we ''analyse" or 
''loosen" words we see that they have come from root- 
sounds, very many of which are imitations of natural 
sounds and cries, as when we say the clock "ticks," or 
name the "cuckoo" and the "peewit" after their cry 
or love-note. The higher languages are always growing; 
intercourse between peoples causes them to use one 
another's words, and, moreover, new inventions need 
new words to describe them. One of the most delight- 
ful books to study is a dictionary that gives us the 
roots of words, that is, whence they came and why 
they were chosen. We shall learn from this that 
nearly all the words that we use to explain or describe 
things have come from something real. For example, 
people who treat you in a haughty way are called 
"supercihous," which means "raising the eyebrows." 
That word comes from the Latin, super , above, and 
cilium, an eyebrow. When we "apprehend" anything, 
the word really means that we grasp, or "lay hold" of 
it; the words "abominate" and "ominous" also come 
from the Latin, both meaning a thing of ill omen, thus 
preserving record of a time w^hen people beHeved in 
warning signs of good or evil. To "consider" was to 
consult the stars (Latin con, together, and sidus, a 
constellation); while to call a thing "trivial" meant 



62 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

anything comrnon e^^o'c^gh to be picked up at three 
cr.ss "lys Lat, ires, three, and via. a way). A knowl- 
edge of the 5:ur:-s of words often saves us from 
b-uiiicrs and ccufusi-ns. as. :cr example, when we talk 
o: the !Mo5a:c becks. ~e mean those in the Bible which 
were once believed :c ce written by Alcses, while 
inlaid floors and walls are called "'mosaic*' from Moiisa, 
a rause^ oecause tne ^^luses — tcie Gree^ goccesses of 
song, music, and dancing, etc, — were often figured on 
them. 

Man at first had ven* few words, and those were 
short ones, and in making known his thoughts to others 
he also used signs — gesture-language," as it has been 
called. \A'e co the same now; for in shaking the head 
to mean "no." in ncdaing it to mean ^^y^^,^^ and in 
shaking hands in proof that we are joined in friendship, 
we SDeak in eesUiie and would have to use a zreat 
deal if we were tra\-eikng in some countr}- of which we 
did not know the language. There are ven* few thin gs 
that cannot be expressed by sig::s or gestures, and 
among the ancients entire ph^ys were performed by 
per- ins called pantondmes (which word means imita- 
tors •:;' ::'.'. : 'ngSj) who acted not by speaking, but 
wholly by mimiay. A stor}' is told of a king who was 
in Rome when Xero was emperor, and who, having 



LANGUAGE 63 

seen the wonderful mimicry of a pantomime, begged 
him as a present, so that he might make use of him 
to have dealings with the nations whose languages he 
did not know. We have now so many words, and are 
always adding to the number, so that we need use 
signs but very little, if at all. 

Just as all the races of mankind probably have come 
from one common home, so the different languages 
which they speak have flowed from one source. 

There are three leading streams of language, and I 
shall have to quote a few hard names in telHng you 
about them. But they are worth remembering. 

It was thought some years ago that Hebrew, the 
language in which the sacred books of the Jews (known 
to us as the Old Testament) are written, was the par- 
ent, so to speak, of all other languages, but it has since 
been found through tracing words to their early forms, 
or roots, that 

I. Sanskrit, in which the sacred books of the Brah- 
mans, known as the Vedas, are written, and 
which was a spoken tongue in the time of 
Solomon and Alexander the Great, but which 
has been a "dead" or unspoken language for 
more than two thousand years; Zend, in which 
the sacred books of the Parsees (or so-called 



64 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

fire-worshippers) known as the Zend-Avesta, 
are written; Greek, the language of Greece; 
Latin; the language of the andent Romans; 
(neither Greece nor Rome had any sacred books, 
poems and epics taking their place); 
and nearly all the other dialects and languages of 
India and Europe, are children of the Indo-European, 
or Ar}'an family of speech, so-caUed, it is said, from a 
Hindu word meaning "noble*' apphed to the worship- 
pers of the gods of the Brahnians. 

2. The second di\'ision of languages includes the 

Hebrew; the Arabic, in which beautiful lansruao^e 
the Koran, the sacred book of the Moham- 
medans, is written; and the languages on the 
ver\' old monuments of Phoenicia, Babylon, 
Ass}Tia, and Carthage. 

3. The third di^"ision includes the remaining lan- 

guages scattered the world over; those of China, 

Tibet, and Farther India appear to stand apart 

as rehcs of the first forms of human speech, 

being mainly made up of words of one syllable. 

The ancient language of Britain is now found only in 

some parts of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, and the 

foundation of our present language, which now contains 

above one hundred thousand words, is the same as that 



LANGUAGE 65 

spoken on the coast of Germany. It was brought over 
by Anglos, Saxons, (hence Anglo-Saxons), Jutes, and 
other tribes from the Continent. Anglo-Saxon is the 
mother-tongue of our present English, to which in 
various forms Greek, Latin and other words have 
been and are being added. 

Enough has been said to help you to see the impor- 
tance and interest attaching to the study of the wonder- 
ful faculty by which we are able to talk to people in 
various languages, and read in ancient books the story 
of man's past thoughts and deeds. I want to lead you 
on to feel and know that the study of words is a de- 
lightful way of spending time, and that the dictionary, 
which is thought by many people to be a dry book, is 
full of poetry and history and beauty locked up in its 
words, which the key of the wise will open. 



X 

WTUTIXG 

Thz use of writing is to put some thing before the 
eye in such a way that its meaning may be known at 
a glance, and the earliest way of doing this —as b}- a 
picture. Picture-writing was thus used for many ages. 
and is still formed among savage races as, for example, 
the Bushmen of South Africa and the AustraUan na- 
tives. On rocks, stone slabs, trees, and tombs, it was 
the de^'ice emplo3-ed to record an event, or teU some 
niessai-e. 

In the course of time, instead of this tedious mode, 

men learned to write signs for certain words or sounds. 

Then the next step was to separate the word into 

letters, and to agree upon certain signs to always 

represent certain letters, and hence arose alphabets. 

The shape of the letters of alphabets is thought by 

some to bear sKght traces of early picture-writing. 

To show you what is meant, Aleph, the first letter of 

the Hebrew alphabet, means an ax^ and the sign for 

that letter was an outline of an ox^s head. Is it not 

66 



WRITING 



67 



Fig. 18. — (Carved on a Piece of 
Walrus Tooth) 

I. A native is resting against his 
house; 2. A reindeer; 3. One man 
shooting at another with an arrow; 
4. Expedition in a dog sledge; 5. Boat 
with sail and paddle; 6. A dog sledge 2 
with the sun overhead, perhaps to 
indicate that summer has come; 7. A 3 
sacred lodge. The figures at each 
outer corner represent young men 
armed with bows and arrows to 
keep off others from the sacred 
place. Inside some members of the 
lodge are dancing round a fire; 
8. Pine tree up which a porcupine is 
climbing; 9. Another pine tree, from 
which a woodpecker is extracting 
insects; 10. Bear; 11, 12. Men driv- 
ing fish into, 13, the net, a captured 
whale, with harpoon and line at- 
tached, above them. 





Figs. 19A, 19B. — Ikdian Grave 

Posts 
Fig. 19 A shows the dead war- 
rior's totem (see p. 104), a tor- 
toise, and beside it a headless 
man, which is a common symbol 
of death among Indian tribes. 
Below the trunk are three marks 
of honour. The next and more 
elaborated figure (19B) records the 



68 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

achievements of Shingabawassin, a celebrated chief of the St. Mary's 
band. His totem, the crane, is shown reversed. The three marks 
on the left of the totem represent important general treaties of 
peace to which he had been a party; the six strokes on the right 
probably indicate the number of big battles which he fought. 
The pipe appears to be a symbol of peace, and the hatchet a 
symbol of war. 





7 
-Indian Love Song 

I. Repres^its the lover; 2. he is singing and beating a magic drum; in 
3 he surrounds himself with a secret lodge, denoting the effects of 
his necromancy; in 4, he and his mistress are joined by a single 
arm to show that they are as one; in 5 she is on an island; in 6 she 
sleeps, and as he sings, his magical power reaches her heart; and 
in 7 the heart itself is shown. To each of these figures a verse of 
the song corresponds. 

1. It is my painting that makes me a god. 

2. Hear the sounds of my voice, of my song; it is my voice. 

3. I cover myself in sitting down by her, 

4. I can make her blush, because I hear all she says of me. 

5. Were she on a distant island I could make her swim over. 

6. Though she were far off, even on the other hemisphere. 

7. I speak to your heart. 



WRITING 



69 




Fig. 21. — War Song* 
Wings are given to the warrior, i, to show that he is swift-footed; 
in 2 he stands under the morning star, and in 3 under the centre 
of heaven, with his war-club and rattle; in 4, the eagles of carnage 
are flying round the sky; in 5, the warrior lies slain on the battle- 
field; while in 6 he appears as a spirit in the sky. The words of 
the song are as follows: — 

1. I wish to have the body of the swiftest bird. 

2. Every day I look at you; the half of the day I sing my song. 

3. I throw away my body. 

4. The birds take a flight in the air. 

5. Full happy am I to be numbered with the slain. 

6. The spirits on high repeat my name. 



* Figs 19A, 19B, 20, 21 are copied from Tylor's Early History of 
Mankind; the originals are in Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes. 



70 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 




Fig. 2 2. — Indian Petition to the United States Congress 
(From Dorman's Primitive Superstitions) 

Fig. 22 is a copy of a petition sent by a group of Indian tribes to the 
United States Congress for fishing rights in certain small lakes 
near Lake Superior. The leading clan is represented by Oshca- 
bawis, whose totem is i, the crane; then follow 2, Waimitligzhig; 
3, Ogemagee; and 4, a third, all of the marten totem; 5, Little 
Elk, of the bear totem; 6, belongs to the manfish totem; 7, to the 
catfish totem. 

From the eye and heart of each of the animals runs a line connecting 
them with the eye and heart of the crane to show that they are 
all of one mind, and the eye of the crane has also a line connecting 
it with the lakes on which the tribes want to fish, while another 
line runs towards Congress. 



WRITING 71 

wonderful that the hundred thousand words that make 
up our English language are composed of only twenty- 
six letters variously arranged? 

The signs used by astronomers for the sun, moon, 
and planets; the signs I, II, III, for one, two, and 
three; are proofs that if picture-writing is of value to 
man in a civiHzed state, it must have been of greater 
value to him, and much more used by him, the farther 
we search back. We still speak of signing our name, 
although we have ceased to use a sign or mark, as was 
done when few could write. 

A wise man has said that "what is ever seen is 
never seen," by which he meant that we are blind to 
the importance of things near to us and in daily use. 
Hence it is that few pause to think what an enormous 
boon the invention of writing has been to man. With- 
out it he could never have risen much above the 
savage state. We could have had only shreds of un- 
certain knowledge about the past: the thoughts of the 
good and great must have perished: no news from near 
or far could have reached us save by word of moiith, 
no letters could be sent to, or received from, absent 
friends — what a blank our life would have been! 
Until printing was invented, books were in manu- 
script, that is, written by hand (Latin manus, the hand, 



CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



and scribOj tx) write) and therefore. v«y costfy. It K 
the art of printing rli: lis ziiie the si read of knowl- 
eige I isiiz'.e, and put it in the power of the poorest 
to buy famous books for i snill s^^zi. 



XI 
COUNTING AND MEASURING 

The art of counting is slowly learned by savage tribes, 
and at this day some are found who cannot reckon 
beyond four, or who, if they can, have no words for 
higher figures. 

All over the world the fingers have been and are used 
as counters, and among many tribes the word for 
*'hand" and "five" is the same. This may be taken 
as a common mode by which the savage reckons: — 

One hand . . .- . 5 

Two hands or half a man . . 10 

Two hands, and one foot . . .15 

Hands and feet, or one man . . 20 

We do the same, as shown in the word digit, which 
is the name for any of the figures from one to nine, 
and comes from the Latin digitus, meaning a finger; 
while counting by fives and tens enters into all our 
dealings, as shown in the word decimal (from the 
Latin decern, ten). One early way of counting was by 
pebbles, the Latin for which is calculi, and we pre- 

73 



74 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

ser r :Ji:5 f-ct in our use :: the word caUtdaie; just as. 
when we tie a knot in OcLt iindkerchief to remind us 
of something ~e feir to forget, we are cx)p}Tng the 
ancient plan of counting witli knotted cords. Besides 
the ±zrer5. other parts of the bod\'j as their names 
5Ji :r jsed for measuring. We speak of £ mm 

a5 iiz : L; of a horse as so man\- hands high; 

fathom, that is. the space of both arms extended, comes 
from ihe Anglo-Saxon 'i.hem, bosom; span is the 
space :r:n :Jir end of the thumb to that of the Httle 
finger when the imi is outstretched; both eU and 
cubit are i::.:r^ Latin ~:rds for the eJhow. V.^nen we 
come to rie^snreroents in space, as nnes. Enriares ana 
solids, we have to learn geometry, or earth- :.: 
as that word means. 



XII 
GAMES, SONG, MUSIC AND DANCING 

"To everything there is a season," says an old 
writer called the Preacher, "a time to weep and a time 
to laugh." For these are the outcome and outlet of 
feelings which, when we are young, rule our lives more 
than reason does. The wiser, as they grow older, 
learn to control their feelings, and thereby avoid 
thoughtless and harmful acts, but the lesson is often 
a hard one to learn. 

To love or hate, to be glad or sorry, these are inborn 
in us all, as they are, in lesser degree, in animals. I 
do not think that man in the Stone Age had a merry 
Hfe, but some spare time came to him between work 
and sleep, and there were the Httle children to care for 
and amuse. We may get a rough sort of guess about 
this in learning how savages now-a-days amuse them- 
selves in games and sports and songs and dances. In their 
games they often mimic serious work, as boys do when 
they play at soldiers, and as do girls also, when they 
play at ''make-beheve" mothers with their dolls. 

75 



76 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

And then cricket and other field sports are mimic 
warfare, in which one side tries to beat the other. 
Greatest of all games were the OI}Tnpian in Ancient 
Greece, which sprang from rehgion. To be a winner in 
these was not so much to gain money as the praises of re- 
nowned poets, singing how "he that overcome th hath for 
the sake of those games a sweet tranquillity throughout 
his life for evermore." Almost all over the world we 
find the game called ''cat's cradle," in which a piece of 
string is looped to make figures imitating various things, 
even to the telling of stories; and there are other 
games that are hundreds and hundreds of years old. 

Savages, as is said of poets, sing because they cannot 
help it, and their earhest songs, which have love and 
war and the deeds of brave men as their theme, are 
chanted by the tribe, and handed down from one 
generation to another. One of the oldest songs of the 
kind is in the book of Genesis (IV. i8) where Lamech 
says "I have slain a man to my wounding, and a 
young man to my hurt." And in the days before writ- 
ing was invented, when memories were not craromed 
with so many things, songs of very great length were 
learned by heart and taught by fathers to their chil- 
dren, or sung by bards in the halls of chiefs and by the 
firesides of the people. As an example of this, about 



GAMES, SONG, MUSIC AND DANCING 77 

eighty years ago, a learned man travelled all over Fin- 
land collecting a number of old ballads which were 
sung by wandering runoias, as they were called. And 
when he came to put these songs together he found that 
each fitted into its place as part of a great epic poem 
named the Kalevala, or "land of heroes," whose theme 
was the deeds of the chiefs and warriors of that north- 
ern land. For how many centuries this had passed 
among the people in unwritten form no one can say. 
It was from the Kalevala that Longfellow borrowed the 
metre of his poem Hiawatha. 

All our musical instruments retain traces of their 
earliest forms. A great poet who lived nearly two 
thousand years ago says that "the whistlings of the 
zeph}T (that is, the west wind) through the hollow of 
reeds first taught men to blow into the hollow stalk." 
So it is from the reed that we get the flute, the trumpet 
and the organ. The drum is the Kttle-altered tom-tom 
of the savage, a circular hollow, across each end of 
which a skin is stretched; and the harp has its begin- 
nings in the twang of the drawn bowstring. Thence, 
too, we get the violin and the piano, which, as a 
"grand," is simply a harp laid flat in a case, the ham- 
mers of the keyboard taking the place of the fingers 
that pull the harpstrings. 



78 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



Dancing is the eldest of all the ways in which 
savages and. indeed, people ever\-where, give vent to 
their feelings. Among savages everything is an excuse 




Fig. 2 7^. — DE^"ELOPiIEXT of the Harp 

a. Music-bow with gourd resonator i^South Africa); b. ancient harp 

(Eg}pt); c. medieval harp (^England). (^From Trior's .4 ;////rc'j;>o/(;gv) 

for a dance. ^"Mien they marry, or have children, or 
go to war, or eat their slain enemies, or want help 
from their gods, or seek to please them, they dance. 
And they make a very serious business of it; it is not 
Vydth them, as T^dth us in our village or ballroom dances, 
mere fun. Dancing in its beginning was a form of 



GAMES, SONG, MUSIC AND DANCING 79 

worship. Among all savage tribes the medicine-men 
or priests dance before their gods, and so it has been 
in every age. We read in the second Book of Samuel 
(VI. 14) that King "David danced before the Lord 
with all his might;" and other ancient books tell how 
the processions moved with song and dance to the 
temples of Rome, of Greece and of Babylon. To this 
day, at the feast of Corpus Christi in Seville, there is a 
ritual dance before the high altar of the Cathedral, 
and at Echternach in Germany the people dance in the 
streets once a year to celebrate the bringing of the 
Christian religion by Saint Willibrord. A missionary 
tells a recent story of Scotch settlers in Prince Ed- 
ward's Island who "danced before the Lord" in their 
church, and he says that it was so "catching" that it 
would have taken but a little to have made him join 
them. 

It is their war-dances that beget most excitement in 
savages, when with yells and whoops and hideous 
grimaces, beating of drums with their hands and of 
the ground with their feet, they work themselves into 
fury and frenzy, the women goading them on, and 
greeting them on their homecoming. So they did in 
Old Testament times, when Miriam and the other 
women went out with timbrels and dances to meet 



8o THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Moses on his \-icton- over the Eg^-ptians. (Exodus 
XV. 20.) When "Da\'id was returned from the 
slaughter of the Philistines the women came out of all 
the cities of Israel singing and dancing." (I. Samuel 

x\Ta. 6.) 

All over the savage world a number of magic dances 
are performed to secure supply of food. The dancers 
deck themselves with feathers to look like birds, or 
with leaves to look like trees, or wear skins and horns 
to look like buffalos. and then dance '^buffalo.'' mimick- 
ing hunting, fishing, or sowing, in the behef that this 
wiU bring them food. As with customs ever^-where, 
these have never died out. In ancient Rome the 
priests danced round the city walls at the season of 
tilling the groimd; hi ancient ^Mexico the women 
tossed their hair as they danced so that the maize 
might have long wa\y tassels, and to this day. in 
Europe, peasant maidens dance and jump high to 
make the fiax grow. These and a heap of aUied cus- 
toms come under what is called ''sympathetic magic," 
which means imitating a thing to bring about a certain 
effect, as, for example, when in times of drought, the 
Oweka Indians drink water and spirt it into the air 
to imitate rain or when, in South Eastern Europe, a 
girl is drenched with water which drips from her. 



GAMES, SONG, MUSIC AND DANCING 8i 

Both these are rain-charms. They "do what they want 
done." 

By slow degrees the dance, which was all dumbshow, 
gave rise to the spoken drama (named from a Greek 
word meaning "to act"), whereby some story, sad or 
merry, was acted either in the open air, as in Greece, 
or under cover in buildings called theatres (so named 
from a Greek word meaning "to see"). 



XIII 

MAN'S PROGRESS IN ALL THINGS 

The early history of man shows us how wonderful 
his progress has been when we compare the Age of 
Stone with our present happy lot. Not only in house 
building, cooking, pottery, clothing, and the various 
uses of metals, have his rude ways been improved upon, 
but, as I shall show you in a later chapter, also in his 
knowledge of the earth beneath and the stars around 
the progress of man has been vast. The waves of ether 
and of the air, the wind, the waterfall and stream, 
daily work for him, and their force is chained to do his 
bidding. He has already seen a good depth, and may 
see further yet, into the mystery of the stars, and every 
day he is spelKng out some new sentence here and 
there in the great book of Nature. 

An ancient writing full of noble thoughts, begins the 

story of some great and noble Hves with these words: 

''Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that 

begat us." But there are men who can never be 

82 



MAN'S TROGRESS IN ALL THINGS 83 

famous because we know only what they did, not who 
they were. I mean those who, in far away times, 
knowing nothing, and thinking nothing, as to what 
would be the outcome of their own simple actions, laid 
the foundation of all that has since been done. For 
he who first shaped a stone weapon was the father of 
all warriors; he who first chipped a flint was the father 
of all sculptors; he who first daubed clay round a 
gourd or coconut shell was the father of all potters; 
he who first scratched a picture of man or mammoth 
was the father of all painters; he who built the first 
rude wigwam or mud-hut was the father of all house- 
builders; he who first scooped out a tree trunk was the 
father of all shipbuilders; he who first piled stones 
together was the father of all builders of pyramids, 
abbeys and cathedrals; he who first bored a hole in a 
reindeer's bone to make a whistle, or twanged a 
stretched sinew, was the father of all musicians; he who 
first drew a picture that might tell some message or 
story was the father of all alphabets; he who first 
counted on his fingers was the father of all arithmetic 
makers; he who first rhymed his simple thoughts was 
the father of all poets; he who first tried to find out 
the secrets of matter and to make gold and silver was 
the father of all chemists: he who first strove to learn 



84 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

the secret of sun and star was the father of all astron- 
omers. La short, all that we see around us of the works 
of man has come from simple beginnings, never by 
leaps or bounds, but by slow steps. 



XIV 
DECAY OF PEOPLES 

I HAVE given this little book the title of the 'Xhild- 
hood of the World " because the progress of the world 
from its past to its present state is like the growth of 
each of us from cliildhood to manhood or womanhood. 

Although the story, on the whole, has flowed 
smoothly along, we must not leave out of sight the 
terrible facts which have sometimes checked the 
current. History, both in books and in ruins, teaches 
that there have been tribes and nations (some of the 
nations so great and splendid that it seemed impossible 
for them ever to fall) which have reached a certain 
point, then decayed and died. This has been the fate 
of nearly all the great empires of past renown. To 
*'the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was 
Rome," there are added the fallen temples and monu- 
ments of Eg}^t, Babylon, Persia, Mexico, Peru and 
other once powerful nations, while in some cases, as 
the Hittites and the Cretans, whose monuments have 
been disinterred, the key to the languages which they 



86 THE CHILDHOOD OP THE WORLD 

spoke, as yet. has not been found. And since man has 
lived so manv thousan.^s :•: ^.ears on the earth, there 
must have risen and fallen races and tribes of which 
no trace will ever be discovered. 

The causes of the sin and crime of which even' place 
in this worid, at one time or another, has been more 
:r Less the scene, are niezs ignorance of what is due 
to their fellow-man. and their wilr^ misuse of their 
strength of body and r :~ers of mind. Not only do the 
"a^ and tiger" instizicts remain in man as a bom 
z^^ter; he can, by means of his bigger brain, bring his 
imagination into play to de\-ise horrors and cruelties 
the stor}- of which is one of the saddest in his history-. 
(See p. 148). Hence have arisen cruel wars and shock- 
ing butcheries; captures of free people, and the crush- 
ing of their brave spirits in slaver}'. Moreover, men 
have disobeyed the laws of health, and the plague 
or "black death" has killed tens of thousands, or 
gluttony and drunkcmiess have destroyed them. 
They ii^ve striven for money and seinsh e:Lse : r^r:- 
ting the eternal fact that not one ci us can live by 
bread alone, but that we Kve our lowest if that be the 
end and aim of our hfe), and their souls, lean and 
withered, have f)erished. 

But although the hand on the dock-face of progress 



DECAY OF PEOPLES 87 

has now and then stood still or even gone back, it is a 
great truth for our comfort and trust that the world 
gets better and not worse. There are some people who 
are always sighing for what is not or cannot be; who 
look back to the days of their childhood and wish 
them here again; who are ever talking of the ''good 
old days" when laughter rang with richest mirth, when 
work was plentiful and beggars scarce, and life so free 
from care that wrinkles never marked the happy face. 
Do not Hsten to these people, they have either misread 
the past or not read it at all. Like some other things, 
it is well-looking at a distance, but ill-looking near. 
We have not to go far back to the "good old times " 
to learn that kings and queens were worse lodged and 
fed and taught than a servant is now-a-days. 

It is very fooKsh and wrong either to wish the past 
back again, or to speak slightingly of it. It filled its 
place; it did its appointed work. Even out of terrible 
wars blessings have sometimes come, and that which 
men have looked upon as evil has been fruitful in good. 
Nothing that has happened has ever been wholly 
wiped out. The great Empires that perished left 
behind them, for good or evil, the effects of what they 
did. The past has made us what we are; and the 
present is helping to shape the future. So what that 



88 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

future will be like rests a good deal with each of us. 
We may help or hinder: we may do a kind act or an 
unkind act. and thus add to the stock of human lo\'e 
or hatred. Can there be a worthier thing to strive for 
than to know that the world is even a little the better, 
and in no way the worse, for our ha\-ing been bom? 



XV 

SUMMARY 

I HAVE striven to put into the foregoing chapters 
what, told at length, would fill many books. And that 
your memory may be kept fresh and clear, I will repeat 
in a few words the substance of what, thus far, has 
been said. 

All living things, from the lowest to the highest, are 
like the trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves of a single 
tree; they have sprung from one root. Man is the 
topmost branch of the great life-tree. His bigger 
brain and his upright posture enabled him to excel all 
other animals. 

Unnumbered years ago, he spread himself over the 

globe from his first home. He was far lower than any 

savages now-a-days; he lived by his cunning and 

strength, outwitting the more powerful animals that 

shared the earth with him. For brains win in the 

struggle for Hfe, and man had the nimbler and bigger 

brain. 

During a time that can only be roughly measured 

89 



90 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

he carried on that struggle with the help of stone tools 
and weapons: his histor}'. lihe that of even* other 
H^ing thing, is one of hghting for food and mates, and 
more room as his numbers increased. There was in 
those old days little mercy or pit}', the weaker gave 
way to the strong and perished. And the strong 
brought forth strong children who grew up to defend 
and hold what they had gained, which, you may be 
sure, were the things worth getting and keeping. 

^lan is a social animal: hence, at the start, he 
banded himseH with other men. Union is strength and 
in this lay the power whereby, at last, in the course 
of his wonderful histor}-. he gained lordship over all 
things that dwell on land or in water. But he and his 
fellow-men would have made Httle headway had they 
been unable to talk to one another. It was in the 
growth of the organs of articulate speech that the 
great guh* between man and ape was further widened 
never to be nlled. 

By degrees he passed from hunting animals to 
taming them; then from eating wild fruits and seeds 
to planting them, which brought about needs for the 
di\'iding of labour, and so arose different kinds of 
workers. Then, as time went on. there was. ever- 
ojowino:, tradins: bv land and sea. Bv the discovert' 



SUMMARY 91 

of metals advance from barbarism was secured; but 
the metals would have been of little use without fire 
to smelt them; hence, even for that alone, the im- 
portance of its discovery. 

CUmate, food and other causes working through 
immense periods, brought about changes marking for 
all time one race from another, dividing mankind into 
white, yellow, red and black. 

The history of man from the beginning to this day 
is a sort of zigzag: some races have never passed be- 
yond the savage state; the surface of the world is 
strewn with the ruins of Empires that wielded power 
and rose to mighty fame, and change is written on the 
face of everything. 



PART n 
MAN THE THINKER 



XVI 

INTRODUCTORY 

The place of an animal in the scale of life is governed 
by the size and quaHty — that is, the grey matter — 
of its brain. Fishes are the lowest among the back- 
boned, and their brains are small and smooth. As we 
pass from these to reptiles, birds, and mammals, we 
find the brains becoming larger and larger and more 
grooved, having a puckered-up look resembHng a 
walnut. Man's brain is the largest and most furrowed, 
but, as further proof of his nearness to the great apes, 
his brain is more like theirs than theirs is Hke that of 
monkeys. 

The brain is the most wonderful part of our body, 
since in addition to its being the organ of the mind, it 
controls all our movements. How mind and brain 
work together we do not know, but we know that if 
anything happens to the brain, the mind is thrown out 
of gear. Among the many marvels that science has 
revealed, none, I think, is greater than this — that the 
brain is a mass of soft, whitish matter made up of 

95 



g6 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

more than four-fifths water, containing about three 
thousand million cells, each with its o^ti work to do, 
yet all acting together as one. and maintaining their 
working power till disease, injury or old age weaken or 
destroy them. For every nerA'e cell appears to differ from 
the cells of which our bodies are made up in that it is 
adapted to last throughout our life, no matter to what 
age we attain. 

It is said that three-fourths of these ner^-e cells 
control the movements of our body and sensations, and 
that the remaining fourth control our thoughts, storing 
up in some way that we cannot explain memor}* of the 
things learnt, seen and heard, which make up what is 
called our experience — what we have "passed through," 
as that word means. In this there hes. — so it seems, 
for we cannot get inside the minds of animals, any 
more than we can into those of our fellow creatures — 
the secret of man as the highest animal. For he has 
the power to conceke about things and shape his acts 
accordingly, as well as to perceive; the power not only 
to know, but to know that he knows, which means 
that he is conscious of himseh; and can say, "I 
am 1." 

How ?nan got his name is uncertain, but there are 
good reasons for behe\'ing that it comes from a root 



INTRODUCTORY 97 

word meaning to think or to know. A fitter one could 
not have been chosen. 

Of course he was Thinker as well as Worker from the 
beginning, but to make things clear we must draw a 
line between that part of his history when his concern 
was to supply the wants of his body, and the other 
part when he could pause to think about the world 
around him and the sky above him, and to shape his 
ideas and ask questions about them. But we shall get 
our minds into a tangle if we treat the divisions made 
in the story of man's history as real. For he never 
began to be this or that; he passed by steps, many of 
which are wholly worn-out, while the traces only of a 
few remain, from lower to higher things, from guesses 
to certainties, and this through the brain whose wonder- 
ful nature I have told you about. 

In his guesses there was one thing that he could not 
know, and that, untaught, none of us could know, — 
that things are not always what they seem. His eyes 
told him that the earth is flat, moveless, and covered 
in by a dome-like vault, across which the sun, moon 
and stars travel. Our eyes tell us the same, but 
astronomers have proved that the earth is a globe and 
revolves round the sun at a speed of about nineteen 
miles every second. The savage, hearing the re- 



98 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

bound of his voice from the hillside, believes that 
this comes from a mocking spirit: we know that it is 
due to the return of air- waves from the solid body which 
it strikes. The old Greeks had a pretty legend that 
Echo was a nymph, daughter of the Earth and Air, 
who, for love of a beautiful youth, named Narcissus, 
pined away until there remained only her voice. 

Although what has to be told about some of these 
guesses must, to make the matters clear, be set down 
in order, you must keep in mind the fact that this 
order does not agree with what is in the mind of the 
savage. For that is in a higgledy-piggledy state; full 
of bewilderment. His thoughts, Hke ours, must take 
shape from his surroundings, hence, where there is so 
much to confuse, his ideas are jumbled; nothing is, 
as we say, "cut and dried." The idea of order in 
anything is very late in the history of man: even today 
we find among many people, who are supposed to be 
well taught, the oddest and most opposite ideas about 
things without seeing how absurd those ideas are. 
And there is another thing to bear in mind when we 
hear about savage man's guesses and the beliefs and 
customs to which they give rise. We shall find in 
these much that is coarae and cruel, but this is not 
because man wilfully acts thus. For nothing coarse or 



INTRODUCTORY 99 

cruel could have lasted if it did not answer to some 
needs which man beheved could not be satisfied in any 
other way. ' 

Those who have studied his body tell us that it 
bears many traces of the structure of the lower animals 
from which he has sprung. And, in hke manner, those 
who have studied the higher religions tell us that all 
of them bear many traces of the lower rehgions from 
which each one of them has sprung. The rehgion of 
the savage is more real to him than ours is to many of 
us. For it had its beginnings not, as is sometimes said, 
in seeking after God, but in suppl}dng the needs of the 
body. That chief need was food, to get T7hich men 
had to work together; no man working for himself; 
if he did, he was killed, because the life of a man can 
never stand in the way of what is good for the tribe. 
They beheved that their food-supply depended on the 
good will of the mighty powers that gave or withheld 
the rain and the sunlight and the moonshine, This 
was their religion, and it explains the world-wide rites 
and ceremonies which had as their one purpose the 
maintenance of the food-supply. They were not 
taught that they must believe this or that creed to 
ensure the happiness of heaven, and escape the tor- 
ments of hell; indeed, it is very late in man's history 



lOO THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

that relidon became self-seekins". makins: the 5a^in2: 
of his soul the chief purpose of his Kfe. They had no 
priests, and no preachers; no churches or chapels, no 
sacred scriptures; no one day set apart to worship their 
gods; their behef was a common every day a5air. in 
which they acted as one man; and to practise it was 
a matter of life and death. 

So it was with what we call morals: a word which 
comes from the Latin mos, manners or customs. Wliat- 
ever was helpful to the tribe was right to do; whatever 
was harmful to it. was wrong to do. and. although the 
ideas of what is rieht and wrens: differ in difierent 
lands and ages, the motive whence they spring is the 
same — the well being of the community. 

This explains the force of Custom throughout the 
world. -\n old ^Titer truly calls it ''King of All." 
It has made people com'use things which are wrong 
in themselves \^dth things which are neither right nor 
wrong, and really of no consequence. In India, a man 
of one caste ^ill not eat ^^dth a man of a different 
caste, and he regards dining at an hotel as a greater 
sin than murder. So. in -\lbania. the shooting of a 
man is a less crime than to eat forbidden food on 
certain days, and. some centuries ago in Germany, 
people were put to death for eating meat in Lent. 



INTRODUCTORY loi 

Until within the last few years in Scotland no one 
dared take a walk on a Sunday, and it was forbidden 
to travel on that day even on a mission of mercy. 
Such a hard-hearted creed contradicted the teaching of 
Jesus that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man 
for the Sabbath." 



XVII 

MAN'S FIRST QUESTIONS 

What were the things that set man thinking and 
asking about? 

He saw around him the world with its great silent 
hills and green valleys; its rugged ridges of purple- 
tinted mountains, and miles of barren flat; its trees and 
fragrant flowers; the graceful forms of animals, the 
soaring bird, the swift deer and kingly Hon; the big, 
ungainly-shaped mammoth (long since died out); the 
wide scene beaming with the colours which came forth 
at the bidding touch of the sunlight, or bathed in the 
shadows cast by passing clouds; he saw the sun rise 
and travel to the west, carrying the Hght away; the 
moon at regular times growing from sickle shape to 
full round orb; then each night the stars, few or 
many, bursting-out like sparks struck off the wheels 
of the Sun God's chariot, or Hke the ghttering sprays 
of water cast by a ship as she ploughs the sea. 

His ears Hstened to the different sounds of Nature; 
the music of the flowing river; the roar of the never 

I02 



MAN'S FIRST QUESTIONS 103 

silent sea; the rustle of the leaves as they were swept 
by the unseen fingers of the breeze; the patter of the 
rain as it dropped from the great black clouds; the 
rumble of the thunder as it followed the spear-Hke 
flashes of light sent from the rolling clouds: these and 
a hundred other sounds, now harsh, now sweet, made 
him ask — What does it all mean? Where and what am 
I? Whence came I; whence came all that I see and 
hear and touch? 

To put these questions was to seek for the answers 
to them; hence man's effort to find out the cause of 
things, what it was that made them as they were. 

All around him was Nature (by which is meant 

that which brings forth), great, mighty, beautiful; was 

it not all aHve, for did it not all move? And the 

savage was rights as he has proved to be in other things 

— since 

AU thoughts that mould the age begin 
Deep down within the primitive soul. 

All Hfe is one, and the earth, whence we all come, is 
no dead thing, because she gives Hfe to all. Her soil 
feeds the plants; the plants feed the animals; and both 
plants and animals are the food of man. That we all 
are one with nature is a truth that the savage felt, 
although he could not know it in its fulness. For in 



I04 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

thinking how he would seek to get at the cause of 
what he saw and heard, we must not suppose he could 
reason as we do. But although he could not shape his 
thoughts into poHshed speech, common sense stood by 
to help him. 

He knew that he himself moved or stood still as he 
chose, that his choice was ruled by certain reasons, 
and that only when he willed to do anything was it 
done. Something within governed all that he did. 
Nature was not still; the river flowed, the leaves trem- 
bled, the earth shook, the clouds drifted: sun, moon, 
and stars stayed not: these then must be moved by 
something within them. Thus began a behef in spirits 
in sun, tree, waterfall, flame, beast, bird, and serpent; 
in brief, in everything. 

It is easy to understand that from this there flowed 
behef in a Hfe common to all, and this may help to 
explain another belief found among many of the lower 
races, namely, that they are descended from animals 
and plants, and even from non-living things. This is 
known as Totemism, a name which comes from an 
O jib way (North American) word meaning ^'family or 
tribe." Three hundred years ago a traveller in Peru 
tells of a tribe who believed that their ancestor came 
out of a river, and who would not allow any fish to be 



MAN'S FIRST QUESTIONS 105 

caught in it because they said that the fish were their 
brothers. The tribes who believe like things call 
themselves after the living or not-living thing from 
which they claim descent, and in the case of the 
animal or plant they will not eat it. If, by stress of 
hunger, they are forced to kill the animal, they beg 
its pardon and in other ways seek to avert any harm 
that may come to them from so doing. The belief 
leads to all kinds of queer customs, as, for example, a 
clan in Central India has a brick for its totem, and 
therefore uses only wattle or mud in building its houses! 
Another clan near the Himalayas claims to be kindred 
with the tiger, and goes into mourning when one of 
these creatures dies. 



XATTI 
^LIX'S FE-\R OF THE UXKXO^^'X 

Abo\"e and aroimd man were movement and change; 
he saw and heard happenings the cause and meaning 
of which bewildered him; hence his feehng was solely 
one of fear. For the unknown is always dreaded; onlj^ 
when the nature of anything is known, can we think 
or talk calmly about it. E\-er;."rrhere and through 
all time the ignorant are the slaves of m>-5ter\' and 
fear; so true is the old saving that '"Knowledge is 
Power." 

As I have sought to show, the instinct of the savage 

leads hfm to ascribe an in-dwelling life to eveniiiing 

that moves, from the sun in heaven to the rustling 

leaves and the stones that roll from the hillside across 

his path. In this he acts as we see sh}-ing horses, timid 

pups, and }"oiing children act, until they leam from 

experience what things move of their own accord and 

what things do not. E^-e^ on the alert against enemies, 

man's fears multiphed them on all sides; and since he 

thought that the unseen beings in whom he believed 

io6 



MAN'S FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN 107 

had passions like his own, he dreaded harm from every 
quarter, especially from things near at hand whose dire 
effects touched him closely, as the whirlpool and the 
rushing river, the falling tree, the devouring beast, or 
venomous reptile. Things farther off and less fitful 
moved him somewhat less, but although day succeeded 
night, he saw that the sun and moon were in turn often 
swallowed and disgorged by the black cloud-monsters, 
and in the wake of the fire and wind-dragons of the 
lightning and the storm he feared destruction and 
death. 

And that primitive fear has never wholly left the 
heart of man. Today the Red Indian "sees signs of 
weal or woe in the turning of a leaf, the crawling of an 
insect, the cry of a bird, and the crackling of a bough," 
and in Hindustan the religion of nine people out of 
every ten is one of fear. For thousands of years, 
harassed and haunted by beliefs about angry gods and 
mahceful demons, man everywhere has been kept in a 
state of fright. We can count the years only by a 
few hundreds when the discovery of an unbroken order 
in the universe has set us free from the terrors begotten 
by those beliefs. For to know that nothing happens 
by chance is to give us a sense of strength and comfort 
that "underneath us are the Everlasting arms." And 



io8 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WOEXD 

we can count the years only by fifties and sixties since 
children were frisihtened. as I was in niv bovhood, 
by tales of people sent to siifier for ever and ever in 
torments of fire and brimstone for no matter how 
Kttle a sin they may have committed. Xow, instead 
of being thus frightened into doing CAdl. lest we be 
thus punished for it. we are taught to love the right 
for its own sake, because only thus can we help on the 
advance of man to what is best and noblest, and enjoy 
for ourselves a '"'peace that passeth understanding." 



XIX 
MYTHS ABOUT THE EARTH AND MAN 

In seeking to account for the kind of Hfe which 
seemed to be (and really was, although not as he 
thought of it) in all things around, man shaped the 
most curious notions into the form of myths, by which 
is meant a fanciful story founded on something real 
(Greek mythos, a fable). If to us a boat or a ship 
becomes a sort of personal thing, especially when 
named after anyone; if ''Jack Frost," and "Old 
Father Christmas," which are but names, seem also 
persons to the mind of a httle child, we may readily 
see how natural it is for savages to think that the 
flame licking up the wood is a hving thing whose head 
could be cut off; to believe that the gnawing feeling 
of hunger is caused by a lizard or a bird in the stomach; 
to imagine that the echoes which the hills threw back 
came from the dwarfs who dwelt among them, and 
that the thunder was the rumbling of the Heaven- 
God's chariot wheels. 

Myths have changed their form in different ages, 

109 



no THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

but they remain among us even now. and live in many 
a word, still used, the first meaning of which has died 
out. To show you what is meant: we often speak of a 
cross or sullen person being in a bad himiour, which 
word rests on a ver\' old and false notion that there 
were four moistures or humours in the body, on the 
proper mixing of which the good or bad temper of a 
person depended. 

In telling you a little about myths I cannot stay to 
show you where the simple early ones became later 
on stiffened into the legends of heroes, with loves and 
fears and hates and mighty deeds, such as make up 
so much of the early histor}' of Greece and Rome, but 
that you will learn from other books. 

To savages the earth was a H\-ing creattire, both as 
a whole and in every part; the soil was her flesh; the 
rocks and stones were her bones. In many languages 
she bears the beautiful, and in so many ways true, 
name of Earth-]Mother, as the self -reproductive. A 
very old and ^"idespread myth tells of a time when 
she and the overarching Heaven-Father were joined 
together, whereby all things were . in darkness until 
some hero cut them asimder and gave Hght to man- 
kind. And an old Greek myth tells how when Heaven 
and Earth rewedded, there was 



MYTHS ABOUT THE EARTH AND MAN iil 

bom unto the day 
And light of life all things that are; the trees, 
Flowers, birds and beasts and them that breathe the seas. 

In savage myth the waterspout was thought to be a 
giant or sea-serpent reaching from sea to sky; the 
rainbow (which books about light will tell you is a 
circle, half only of which we can see) was a Hving 
demon coming down to drink when the rain fell, or, 
prettier myth, the heaven-ladder or bridge along which 
the souls of the blest are led by angels to Paradise; 
or the bow of God set in the clouds, as Indian, Jew, 
and Fin have called it; the clouds were cows driven by 
the children of the morning to their pasture in the 
blue fields of heaven; the tides were the beating of 
the ocean's heart; the earthquake was caused by the 
Earth Tortoise moving underneath; the lightning was 
the forked tongue of the storm demon, the thunder 
his roar; and volcanoes were the dwelling places of 
angry demons who threw up red-hot stones from them. 

Man's sense of the wonderful is so strong that a 
belief in giants and pigmies and fairies was as easy to 
him as it has been hard to remove. The bones of 
huge beasts now extinct were said to have belonged 
to giants, whose footprints were left in those hollows 
in stones which we know to be water worn. The big 



112 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

loose stones were said to have been torn from the 
rocks by the giants and hurled at their foes in battle. 
The stories of the ^-e^}' small people who once lived in 
northern Europe, and whose descendants now live in 
Lapland, perhaps gave rise to a behef in dwarfs. The 
flint arrowheads of the Xew Stone Age were said to 
be elf-darts used by the Httle spirits dwelling in woods 
and wild places, and the poHshed stone axes to be 
thunderbolts ! 

How all kinds of other m}-!!!^. such as those account- 
ing for the bear's stumpy tail, the robin's red breast, 
the crossbill's twisted bill, the aspen's quivering leaf, 
arose. I cannot now stay to tell you. nor how out of 
m}-ths there grew the nurser}' stories and fair}' tales 
which children never tire of hearing; for we must soon 
be startins: on our vova^e from the wonderful realm 
of fanc}' to the not less wonderful land of fact whither 
science is ever bearing us. Xay, not less wonderful, 
but more wonderful, since the fancies come from the 
facts more than the facts from the fancies. 



XX 

MYTHS ABOUT SUN AND MOON 

Among many savage tribes the sun and moon are 
thought to be man and wife, or brother and sister. 
One of the most curious myths of this kind comes from 
the Esquimaux, the dwellers in the far North. It re- 
lates that when a girl was at a party, some one told 
his love for her by shaking her shoulders after the 
manner of the country. She could not see who it was 
in the dark hut, so she smeared her hands with soot, 
and when he came back she blackened his cheek with 
her hand. When a hght-was brought she saw that it 
w^as her brother, and fled. He ran after her and 
followed her as she came to the end of the earth and 
sprang out into the sky. There she became the sun 
and he the moon, and this is why the moon is always 
chasing the sun through the heavens, and why the 
moon is sometimes dark as he turns his blackened 
cheek towards the earth. 

Among other people, and in later times, the sun is 
spoken of as the lover of the dawn who went before 

113 



114 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

him, killing her with his bright spear-Kke rays, while 
night was a living thing which swallowed-up the day. 
If the sun is a face streaming with locks of light, the 
moon is a silver boat, or a mermaid living half her 
time under the water. When the sun shone with 
a pleasant warmth he was called the friend of man; 
when his heat scorched the earth he was said to be 
slaying his children. You have perhaps heard that 
the dark patches on the moon's face, which look so 
very much like a nose and two eyes, gave rise to the 
notion of a '^a man in the moon," who was said to be 
set up there for picking sticks on a Sunday! 



XXI 

MYTHS ABOUT ECLIPSES 

There is something so weird and gloomy in eclipses 
of the sun and moon, that we can readily understand 
how through all the world they have been looked upon 
as the direct work of some dreadful power. 

The Chinese imagine them to be caused by great 
dragons tr}dng to devour the sun and moon, and beat 
drums and brass kettles to make the monsters give 
up their prey. Some of the tribes of American Indians 
speak of the moon as hunted by huge dogs, catching 
and tearing her till her soft Hght is reddened and put 
out by the blood flowing from her wounds. To this 
day in India the native beats his gong as the moon 
passes across the sun's face, and it is not so very long 
ago that in Europe both ecKpses and rushing comets 
were thought to show that troubles were near. Here 
again we learn the lesson that Fear is the daughter of 
Ignorance, and only departs when Kjiowledge enHghtens 
us as to the cause of things. For we know that an 
eclipse (which word comes from Greek words meaning 

115 



no THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

to Jeasfe out or forsake) is caused either by the noon 
passing in such a line between the earth and sun as to 
cause his light to be iu zirt or altogether L:ii tu. 
■ji for a short time; or by the earth so passing 
between :he sun j^ni moon as to throw its shadow 
upon the nin mi partly or whoUy hide her light. 
Qur fear would arise if ed^)ses did not happen at the 
very moment when astronomers have calculated them 
to occur. 



XXII 
MYTHS ABOUT STARS 

There is a curious Asian myth about the stars which 
tells that the sun and moon are both women. The 
stars are the moon's children, and the sun once had as 
many. Fearing that mankind could not bear so much 
light, each agreed to eat up her children. The moon 
hid hers away, but the sun kept her word, which no 
sooner had she done than the moon brought her 
children from their hiding place. When the sun saw 
them she was filled with rage and chased the moon to 
kill her, and the chase has lasted ever since. Some- 
times the sun comes near enough to bite the moon, 
and that is an eclipse. The sun, as man may still see, 
devours her stars at dawn, but the moon hides hers 
all day while the sun is near, and brings them out at 
night only, when the sun is far away. 

The names still in use for certain clusters of stars 

and single stars were given long ago when the stars 

were thought to be living creatures. They were said 

to be men who had once Hved here; to be mighty 

117 



iiS THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

hiinteis or groups of young men and maidens dandng. 
Many of the nai::ie5 ^ivez sz:~ that the stars ~ere 
watched with anxietv zy the tamer and sailor, who 
thought they mled the weather. The grctp of stai3 
known to us as the Pleiaaes ~^ s 5 :> caJled from the 
word plein, which means to sail, because the cLa Greek 
sailors ~atched for their rishig tetire they ventured 
on the ocean. They are called h t :. : stars by the 
Zalas. ~ho live hi 5:ath Africa, becattse when they 
appear the pecple beghi to dig. A ^-en^ good illus- 
tration of the change which a nvth takes is afforded 
hv the Greek ra}-tliology in ~hi:h the Pieiaces are 
spoken of as the seven caarhters et Atias ''who was 
said to bear the world on Lis shtthaers . sin c: ~h;ni 
were ~edded to the gods, and the seventh to a kin?, 
far ~hi:h reason Merope. as she is named, shines the 
faintest of them all. 

The stars were formerh- believed to govern the fate 
of a person in life. The tanper was said to be good or 
bad, the natare gra .e or gay, according to the planet 
which was in the ascendant, as it was called, at birth. 
Several words in our language witness to this old belief. 
We speak of a '^disaster," vrhich nteias the stroke or 
blast of an unlucky stir; ' hta 1 LTtrrh ~ord for 

star. We call a person * ill-starred * or bom under a 



MYTHS ABOUT STARS 119 

"lucky star." Grave and gloomy people are called 
''saturnine," because those born under the planet 
Saturn were said to be so disposed. Merry and happy 
natured people are called ''jovial," as born under the 
planet Jupiter or Jove. Active and sprightly people 
are called "mercurial," as born under the planet 
Mercury. Mad people are called "lunatics." Luna 
is the Latin word for moon, and the more sane move- 
ments of the insane were beheved to depend upon her 
phases or appearances of change in form. 

Sun, moon, and stars were all thought to be fixed 
to the great heaven (which word is said to come from 
the Anglo-Saxon Jiefan^ to hft, although this is not 
certain) because it seemed Hke a soHd arch over the 
flat earth. To many a mind it was the place of bhss, 
where care and want and age could never enter. The 
path to it was imagined to be along that bright looking 
band across the sky known to us as the "Milky Way," 
the sight of which has given birth to several beautiful 
myths. 



XXIII 
NATURE-WORSHIP 

We have now to learn a little about some of the 
things which savages worship, and the worship of 
which has not wholly died out among some higher 
races. 

The interesting question as to what man first wor- 
shipped has had many answers, but none of them are 
complete, because no one answer wholly meets the 
case. Some learned men think that the worship of 
serpents and trees was the earhest faith of mankind. 
Others have thought that the earth, sun, moon, stars, 
and fire were first worshipped. It is not in any one 
thing, but in man's sense of powers about him^ and 
around him which he could not control, that we must 
look for the beginnings of worship (see p. 99). Ruled 
by fear of them, he would try to get into some sort of 
friendly relation with them ; he would devise ways to se- 
cure their help and favour. Ages might pass before he 
thought of them as in any way Hke himself, that is, as 

persons, and then his ideas of them would be shaped 

120 



NATURE-WORSHIP 1 2 1 

by his surroundings. In a flat country, there would 
be no mountain gods; in a waterless land, there would 
be no river gods; and in a country not bordering on 
the sea, there would be no ocean gods. 

1. Worship of Lifeless Things. 

A. The Earth 

B. Water 

C. Stones and Mountains 

D. Fire 

E. Sun, Moon and Stars 

2. Worship of Living Things 

F. Animals 

G. Trees 
H. Man 

A. The Earth. Earth worship has a foremost place 
in early religions. As I have said, she was fitly named 
All-Mother, for from her all things come. The idea 
of her motherhood was no mere pretty fancy, but a 
fact; to the natives of America and elsewhere she was 
a living thing; indeed, a great astronomer, who lived 
three hundred years ago, thought that the lungs and 
gills through which the Earth-spirit breathed would 
one day be found at the bottom of the sea! 

This idea of the Earth-Mother grew as man passed 



122 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



in 



litifiil myths 
::h of plant 



-- --.^ _e;- 



— p -- 



C : n;: e : : T i with tJiese 




Fig. ij.. — - 
(A idief fcczi 'Jzt 



rjstan Altar 



ved in the Uffizi 



\^r!Oiis cererDonies and customs at dLzer^ 



«■ 1 1 C » C.t. - . 



of all oi ~ jii 



hmrlrlincr 



of flocks aZLZ :.rri-S. ^ ] Hie Oi UiC SaCTiu-CcS uiicn 

offered were bloody, ': r:: .se of the belief which has 
caused so much cruelty" and sunering taat only in such 



NATURE-WORSHIP 1 23 

way could the favour of the gods be won. It was be- 
lieved that the Earth-spirit was angry when the plough 
cut the soil, or when the cattle trampled upon it, or 
when the foundations of a building were driven into 
it. So we read that in ancient Mexico a woman 
dressed to represent the Earth goddess was killed and 
her heart offered to the Maize Mother; that in the 
Philippine Islands a slave was sacrificed before the 
rice was sown; while only a few years ago, some tribes 
in Bengal hacked a victim to pieces in the belief that 
his blood was necessary to give a deep red colour to 
the turmeric (a dye-yielding plant) which they cul- 
tivated. In many parts of the world to this day, a 
victim, usually an animal, is buried under the founda- 
tion, or inside the wall, of a new building to appease 
the Earth-spirit. 

In other lands, and in later and happier times, these 
hideous sacrifices gave place to processions and festivals 
free from cruel rites. The priests led the people round 
the fields, singing hymns, and blessing the growing 
crops. The spring became more and more a season of 
joy and hope, and from these more beautiful forms 
of Earth worship came our Mayday dances and har- 
vest thanksgivings. In some parts of England there 
survives the custom of patrolling the bounds of the 



124 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

parish, when the clerg}Tnan and his flock deprecate 
the vengeance of God by a blessing on the fruits of the 
earth and. in beating the bounds, preserve the rights 
and properties of the parish. 

B. Water. The worship of water, that mar\'ellous 
thing without which there could be no Hfe. is very wide- 
spread and easy to account for — for what seemed so 
full of Hfe. and therefore, according to early man's 
reason, so full of spirits, as rivers, brooks, and water- 
falls? To him it was the water demon that made the 
river flow so fast as to be dangerous in crossing, and 
that curled the dreaded whirlpool in which Hfe was 
sucked. \\"hen one river god came to be afterguards 
beHeved in, as controlling each stream, making it to 
flow lazily along or to rush at torrent speed, it was be- 
Heved to be wrong to save any drowning person lest 
the river god, or the demons who were beHeved to be 
the ghosts of drowned men, should be cheated of their 
prey. 

Sacred springs, holy weUs, abound ever}'T\-here to 
show how deep and lasting was water worship. So 
cleansing and healing a thing, the more so when it has 
minerals in it, made early appeal to man, and from 
ancient Babylonia to modern Wales the sick and crip- 
pled have flocked to holy weUs to be cured. The same 



NATURE-WORSHIP 1 2 5 

belief explains the ancient and modern rite of baptism, 
which led to the cruel creed no savage would have 
framed that if children were not sprinkled with water 
by a priest they could not be saved, and to the belief 
that "holy water" can drive away demons and witches. 
The great rivers of the world, as the Nile, the Tiber 
and the Thames, are famous as ''fathers," and in art 
are sculptured in human forms, while among the more 
sacred rivers is the Ganges, of which some beautiful 
stories are given in the sacred books of India, telling 
how it flows from the heavenly places to bless the earth 
and wash away all sin. In West Africa offerings are 
made by the sorcerers to still the raging sea, as among 
the ancient Greeks and Romans victims were cast into 
it, in each case as a sacrifice to the great sea gods, or 
"mother sea," as the ancient Peruvians, worshipping it 
as giver of food, called it. Down to the eighteenth 
century the inhabitants of the Butt of Lewis in Scot- 
land made offerings to a sea god named Shony, and 
even within recent times continued certain rites to the 
god to secure a good supply of seaweed. 

C. Stones and Mountains. All over the world, and 
for all sorts of reasons, odd and otherwise, stones have 
been worshipped. I spoke (p. 112) of the old belief 
that flint arrowheads were fairy darts and chipped 



126 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

tools thunderbolts, and the belief in stones as sacred 
was helped because some of them were known to have 
fallen from the sky. These are what we call ^'shooting 
stars," which being too large to melt in vapour as they 
pass through the atmosphere have reached the earth 
in a solid state. Of such kind are said to be the Black 
Stone at Mecca, which Mohammedans travel long dis- 
tances to worship, and also stones in Mexico and India. 
Stones of curious shape are believed to have magic 
powers. A savage sees a stone that looks Hke a bread 
fruit, so he buries it near a bread fruit tree in the be- 
lief that he will thus have a good crop. Or he sees a 
stone with little stones underneath it, and worships 
these in the hope that his sow will give him many 
pigs. These are also examples of "sympathetic magic" 
(see p. 80). In Nigeria, when a man falls ill, lots are 
cast, and food and drink given to sacred stones that 
they may cure him. 

More than any other worship, that of stones links 
together the past and present. The history of the an- 
cient Greeks, Romans, Jews, Mexicans, and other peo- 
ple of renown, is full of examples of belief in stones as 
alive and as having magic powers. Two hundred years 
before Christ the Romans (whose primitive rites were 
agricultural) , joyfully welcomed an image, a small rough 



NATURE-WORSHIP 127 

black stone, of the Great Nature or Mother Goddess 
Cybele from Asia Minor, because they believed it 
would help them to victory. The sacred images of the 
Goddess Diana, and of the gods Jupiter and Terminus, 
were unhewn blocks, and an old writer tells of thirty 
shapeless stones that the Greeks worshipped. The 
Peruvians had a legend of stones into which some men 
and women who angered the Creator were turned, re- 
minding us of the story of Lot's wife changed into a 
pillar of salt for disobeying God. A very striking 
example of Jewish belief in stones as living is given in 
the Book of Joshua (XXIV, 27), where it is said that a 
stone heard all the words that God spake! Old records 
tell us of "decrees as late as the eleventh century con- 
demning the barbarous worship of Stones, Trees, and 
Fountains and of the Heavenly Bodies," by Christians. 
Oaths were sworn on stones; sick people rubbed against 
them to be cured; kings, as is the King of England to 
this day, were crowned on them, while the belief in 
them as bringers of good fortune is widespread. As a 
boy, I carried a holed stone in my pocket for luck. 

Standing stones, stones built up like tables and in 
circles, are scattered in thousands over the globe. They 
often mark a burial place, and veneration or fear of the 
dead leads to worship of them. They have given rise 



128 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

to many l^ends of the kind jiist named, and the great 
circles esp>ecially have been the scenes of rites and cere- 
monies which are still performed in India and other 
parts of the East, where things have changed scarcely 
at all from the remotest times. 

Sacred, also, are the great mounta i ns whose tops 
pierce the heavens. There man has placed the dwell- 
ings of the gods; as of Jupiter among the Greeks; 
Jehovah among the Jews; and Odin among the Norse- 
men. Mountain-worship is found in China, and among 
the native races of America ** almost all the mountains 
and high places were supposed to be the dwelling place 
of spirits and spirit forms." 

D. Fire. The shooting, leaping, crackling flames, de- 
vouring what is thrown on them, and sending it off in 
smoke — were not these also aHve? Ever since man 
found out how to obtain fire, his care has been to guard 
it. WTierever :iie savage gc es he takes it with him, hke 
the Papuans, who carr}' a smouldering stick when they 
travel through the jimgle, and keep a fixe burning in 
their canoes. Lo. Malay the hearth nie must not be 
stepped over; among the Todas of India when a lamp is 
Kt worship is paid to it; in ancient Greece the fire was 
kept burning in ever)- house in honour of Hestia, the 
hearth eoddess. and likewise in Rome to Vesta. There 



NATURE-WORSHIP 129 

SIX maidens kept alive the holy fire in the temple of the 
goddess, the same rites were performed in far-off Peru, 
where the virgins were ''wives of the sun;" today, 
among the Bagandas in Africa, girls are set apart for a 
similar duty. The lit lamp in the temple at Jerusalem 
was never extinguished. As late as the reign of Henry 
VIII. the nuns of Saint Brigit or Bridget (once a pagan 
fire-goddess) tended a holy fire which they might not 
blow out with their breath, as in Persian temples to- 
day, where fire is an emblem of the divine, the faces of 
the priests are covered with veils, and as in India 
Brahmans are forbidden to blow a fire with their 
mouths. When the Kayans of Borneo pray they light 
something in the belief that the smoke therefrom will 
carry their petition to the gods, who, it is thought, en- 
joy the smell of things sacrificed, as we read in the 
book of Genesis that God "smelled a sweet savour" 
when Noah ''offered burnt offerings on the altar." 
(VIII. 21.) Hence the sacredness of fire as bringing 
man into touch with the^ gods; hence also, the chief 
place given in India to Agni, god of fire, as also of the 
sun, from which it was believed that fire came. It was 
to the god Moloch, Jehovah and other Asiatic gods, as 
also to American gods of olden time, that human sacri- 
fices were offered. 



130 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Fire was also worshipped as a cleansing things ward- 
ing off diseases and e\Tl spirits. For that reason, in an- 
cient Rome tapers were burned in the chambers of 
newly-bom babies, as in Scotland fires were kept burn- 
ing near a child until it was christened. There is a 
saying in the Hebrides that "no e\"il comes from fire," 
and it was an ancient custom in Britain, in times of any 
dreaded disease, to light what is called the "need-fire" 
when both men and cattle were driven through it as a 
remedy against the evil. At certain times all fires were 
put out, and then reKt from the need-fire, whence, per- 
haps, a custom in the Roman Catholic Church of 
putting out the candles on Easter Eve and then re- 
lighring them from consecrated newly-made fire. Even- 
Old M -y Day a nre-festival, known as the Beltane, was 
held, prvi/oaoly to mark the arrival of the spring, always 
a season of joy. From this may have come the custom 
of fighting bomires to mark some notable event. 

E. Sun, Moon and Stars. There is nothing that 
would excite man's wonder at first so much as the fact 
that dayHght was not always with him; that for a time 
he could see thinsrs axoimd him, and then that the dark- 
ness crept over them and caused him to grope along his 
path or He down to rest. 

Each morning, before the sun was seen, ra}-3 of light 



NATURE-WORSHIP 1 3 1 

shot upwards as if to herald his coining, and then he 
arrived to flood the earth with more Hght, growing 
brighter and brighter till the eye could scarce look upon 
hini, so dazzling was the glory. Then as slowly he sank 
again, the light rays lingering as they came until they 
passed away altogether. 

Therefore the natural feeling of man was to bow be- 
fore this Lord of Light, and, in the earhest known form 
of adoration, kiss his hand to it, paying it the offering 
of sacrifice. There is an old story, from some Jewish 
writings known as the Talmud, which describes very 
beautifully man's feeling concerning the darkness and 
the light. 

It relates that '^when Adam and Eve were driven out 
of the garden of Eden, they wandered over the face of 
the earth. And the sun began to set, and they looked 
with fear at the lessening of the light, and felt a horror 
like death- steal over their hearts. And the fight of 
heaven grew paler and the wretched ones clasped each 
other in an agony of despair. Then all grew dark. 
And the luckless ones fell on the earth, silent, and 
thought that God had withdrawn from them the fight 
forever; and they spent the night in tears. But a beam 
of fight began to rise over the eastern hills, after many 
hours of darkness, and the golden sun came back and 



132 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

dried the tears of Adam and Eve, and then they cried 
out with joy and said, 'Heaviness may endure for a 
night, but joy cometh in the morning; this is a law 
that God hath laid upon nature.' " 

The worship of the heavenly bodies is not only very 
widespread, but continued to a late age among the 
great nations of the past, as the names of their gods 
and the remains of their temples prove. In Great Brit- 
ain pillars were once raised to the sun, and altars to 
the moon and the earth goddess, while the story of 
early belief is preserved in the names given to some of 
the days of the week, as Sun-day, Mon- or Moon-day. 

Days were the most ancient division of time, and as 
the changes of the moon began to be watched they 
marked the weeks, four weeks roughly making up the 
time which was seen to elapse between every new 
moon. (Moon means the measurer, hence our word 
month, for time was measured by nights and moons 
long before it was reckoned by days and suns and 
years.) To distinguish one day from another, names 
were given; and as it was a beHef that each of the 
seven planets presided over a portion of the day, their 
names were applied to the seven days of the week. 
The Anglo-Saxons from whom the EngKsh and Ameri- 
can peoples are descended, "consecrated the days of the 



NATURE-WORSHIP 1 3 3 

week to their seven chief gods. Sunday and Monday 
to the sun and moon, as already stated; Tuesday to 
Tuisco, father of gods and men; Wednesday to Woden 
or Odin, one-eyed ruler of heaven and god of war; 
Thursday to Thor, the god of thunder; Friday to Friga, 
Woden's wife; Saturday, the day ruled over by the 
planet Saturn. We use the name for each month of the 
year which the Romans gave, but the Saxon names 
were very different, January being called the -wolj- 
monat or wolf-month, March the lenet-7nonat, because 
the days were seen to lengthen, and so on. 

The sun is worshipped in some countries; the moon 
in others; sometimes both are worshipped, but in these 
cases, moon worship is often the older of the two. 

I have dwelt on the fact — always to be borne in 
mind — that food-supply rules men's acts; whatever 
helps them to this is their friend, their kind god; what- 
ever hinders this, is their evil god. 

Now in torrid and parched lands the sun is dreaded, 
because he dries up the springs and water courses, and 
shrivels the food-yielding plants. So the dwellers there- 
in welcome the moon as the kindly god, because it is at 
night that the refreshing dews fall and that the flocks 
and herds, free from the blistering sunrays, can be 
moved from one pasture to another. The Central 



134 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Africans dread the rising of the sun. and worship only 

the moon, and to her the ancient races of South Amer- 
ica paid honours and sacrificed, because they beheved 
that she alone helped plants and animals to grow. The 
birth of the new moon is, and has been, in many lands, 
a time of rejoicing; for example, the ancient Israelites 
flashed the news by hre signals from hill to hill. .\nd 
her waxing and waning have given rise to a heap of 
customs and strange beHefs, some of which have not 
died out. For example, many people say that the 
moon's changes rule the weather, whereas they do noth- 
ing of the kind. If they did, there would never be any 
settled w^eather, because in her revolution round the 
earth the moon changes from hour to hour. 

But it is before the sun, bringer of warmth, light, and 
Hfe, that man, through all ages and many lands, has 
bent the knee in worship and prayer, and sacrificed 
that which is dearest to him. And, truly, it is a very 
noble kind of worship. To tell the story of it would fill 
a big book. It would take us to ancient Peru, where 
the people beheved that their kings were the children 
of the sun; and to Mexico, with its tale of bloody sac- 
rifices; then northward to the Blackfeet Indians of to- 
day, among whom the sun dance is a great yearly festi- 
val. One of them, not ver}- long ago, said to a traveller 



NATURE-WORSHIP 135 

"We don't understand the white man's religion. The 
black-robed (Roman Catholic Priests) teach us one 
thing, the men with white neckties (Protestant mis- 
sionaries) teach us another, and we are confused. The 
Sun God is all-powerful, for every spring he makes the 
trees to bud and the grass to grow. We see these 
things with our own eyes, and therefore know that all 
life comes from him." Crossing the Pacific ocean, we 
should find milHons of Chinese sun- worshippers ; in 
India the Brahmins would show us their sacred books 
which speak of the sun as "the shining god among the 
gods;" and in the story of ancient Persia we should 
read about ]\Iithra, whose worship spread through the 
Roman Empire so far westwards that altars to him 
have been found in the North of England. It is said 
that our festival of Christmas Day is borrowed from 
the festival of Mithra as the Unconquered Sun. Both 
Greece and Rome had their sun gods; the one named 
Hehos, the other Sol, about the temples and sacrifices 
to whom you will read in what are named "classic" 
histories. In Eg}pt Ra, the sun, was chief god, and to 
him more h}Tnns were sung and more prayers offered 
than to any other of the many gods of that country; 
although it is to another god Aton, that hymns as 
noble and beautiful as some of the Psalms of David 



i-,6 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



■0 



were composed (see p. 196). Herodotus, who is called 
the •*' Father of Histor}*.*' tells a touching stor}* of an 
Eg}-ptian princess who, when d}-ing, asked her father 
that she might look on the sun once in the year. And 
we can picture her. crimson-robed in her coffin, carried 
from her tomb every spring, escorted by a company of 
priests and maidens, to gaze upon the bright god, and 
then borne to her dark resting place. Sun worship must 
be enormouslv old, because all the sjeat nations have 
sprung from savage races among whom that worship 
began. Ever\'where man clings to what he has been 
taught to beheve, and untold hundreds of years pass 
before any changes in religions are made, while in the 
rites and ceremonies which they retain they preser^-e 
traces of their origin. 

In the chapter on m}i:hs about the stars I spoke of 
the beKef that they rule human fate. Those who pro- 
fess to foretell events from their movements are called 
Astrologers (Greek astron, star, and logos, discourse) and, 
strange as it may seem, there are people in ci^'ilized 
countries who still beheve in them. The desire to know 
the future makes the ignorant the dupes of fortune- 
tellers. Among the ancient Chaldeans and Hebrews 
astrolog}' was mixed up with star worship, the stars 
being looked on as the abode of angels and spirits. 



NATURE-WORSHIP 1 3 7 

From their unchanging places, as it seemed, in the 
heavens, they were named "fixed" stars; God had put 
them there. The stars that kept not their places, 
hence called "planets" (Greek, planao, to wander) 
were believed to have broken his law, and were there- 
fore cast into "the blackness of darkness for ever." 
As for the "falling stars," they have been to every 
people a source of terror, and omens of disaster. The 
negroes think that they are the souls of dead sorcerers 
coming back to work mischief; the Welsh peasant be- 
lieves that they betoken death to the inmates of the 
house over wliich they fall, and the Provencal shep- 
herds beheve that they are souls which God does not 
want to keep with Him. 

F. Animal Worship. We have seen that, to the 
savage, everything that moves is aUve, but he would 
not fail to notice that both animals and plants were 
aKve in a different sort of way. The water swirled and 
foamed, the volcano hissed, the wind howled and the 
thunder boomed, but no eyes gHstened from them, no 
huge claws sprang forth to tear. And the brute seemed, 
as we now know it to be, so like to man in many 
things, and withal was sometimes so much stronger, 
that it quickened his fears and impelled his worship. 

Animals of all kinds play a great part in the history 



13S THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

of religions. Just as man's surroundings shaped his 
gods, so the country in which he Hved ruled the ani- 
mals that he worshipped. In the far Xorth these 
were the bear and the woh; further South the Kon and 
tiger and crocodile: in ancient Eg}-pt. the great home of 
animal Vv^orship. bulls, serpents, cats, crocodiles, hawks, 
and many other animals were sacred; further East, in 
India, the bull, cow and so forth: for the Hst is too 
long to be given here. With so many from which to 
choose. I will take as an example the serpent as wor- 
shipped not only by savage, but by higher, races well 
nigh aU over the world. So curming and subtle seemed 
that long, limbless. T^Tithing. brilhant-coloured. un- 
canny thing: so deadly was its poison fang, so fascinat- 
ing the ghtter of the eye that looked out from its hate- 
ful face; that we can readily understand what fear it 
aroused, -\mong the four things that Solomon said 
were "too wonderful for him.*" one was "the way of a 
serpent on a rock." .\mong the Dakotahs and Shaw- 
nees the words for spirit and snake are the same; ser- 
pent worship takes hideous shapes among the \'oodoos 
of Hayti; in Malabar a room is set apart in the house 
for the snakes; in Madras there is a temple to which 
crowds go to worship them, and in other parts of India 
thev are beheved to be the incarnation (i. e. the cloth- 



NATURE-WORSHIP 



139 



ing in the flesh) of some saint or demi-god. The Ojib- 
ways and Cherokees of North America offer sacrifices 
to the rattlesnake as a god; the Peruvians worshipped 
adders, and in Tena- 
yuco, in Mexico, an 
old traveller found so 
many huge figures of 
serpents which were 
worshipped as gods 
that he named it the 
Town of Serpents. 
Some of the ancient 
mounds scattered 
over the United 
States are serpent 
shaped, but their pur- 
pose is not known. 
In ancient Crete the 
snake was conse- 
crated to the Earth 
Mother; in ancient 
Greece and Rome it 
was the god of heal- 
ing; the citadel of Athens was defended by a great ser- 
pent, and there were snake dances in the streets of that 




Fig. 25. — Snake- Worship in 
Ancient Greece 

(From INIiss Jane E. Harrison's Pro- 
legomena to the Study oj Greek 
Religion) 



140 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

dty just as today there are among the Moqui Indians, 
and the Xagas of Hindustan. And just as the Moquis 
coil the snakes round their shoulders and hold them be- 
tween their teeth, so there was an ancient Christian sect 
called Ophites (from Greek ophis. a serpent) who trained 
snakes to coil themselves in holy places. !Much more 
could be told you. but I must leave off to add one sin- 
gular example of animal worship among the Todas of 
Southern India. These people worship certain buffaloes 
and keep them in sacred dairies; their mi'llc is a sacred 
fluid and can be drunk only by the priests who have 
charge of the animals. Anyone may drink the milk of 
other buffaloes. In some part of England today when 
a cow is milked, a few drops are spilt on the ground, 
perhaps a reKc of sacrince to the Earth Mother. 

Savage beHef in kinship with animals may explain 
how even among ci\'ilized people the}' came to be re- 
garded as wilfully causing the death of men, women 
and children, and were actually tried and if found 
guilty were hanged or burnt. Under the Hebrew code 
if an ox gored a man or woman it vras stoned to death 
(Exodus XXI. 28). and in the annals of animal trials, 
the chief offenders were pigs accused of devouring 
young children. In the case of caterpillars and other 
insects which damaged fruit and other trees, because 



NATURE-WORSHIP 141 

they could not be easily captured, they were cursed by 
the priests, so that they might not return or die. And 
this punishment of animals went on for a thousand 
years in Europe ! In ancient Athens if a man was killed 
bv a stone it was tried and condemned to be cast out- 
side the city borders, and this is only one of a heap of 
examples of punishment also of Hfeless things which 
had caused death. 

G. Trees. This worship is found all over the world. 
The life that, locked up within trees and plants during 
the long winter, burst out in leaf and flower and fruit, 
and seemed to moan or whisper as the breezes shook 
creaking branch and murmuring leaf; was that not also 
the sign of an indwelling spirit? 

The Ojibways dislike cutting down growing trees, 
because it puts them to pain: the West Indian negroes 
are very unwilling to cut down the big silk-cotton tree 
through fear of the ''duppy" that Hves in it. The 
Dyaks of Borneo and the Filipinos will not fell certain 
trees because they believe that the souls of the dead 
dwell in them: the "primitive pagans" of Southern 
Nigeria, as they are called, say that "when any of us 
dies his spirit goes into the big tree, and this is why we 
will not have it cut," and in Oko the natives wiU not 
use certain trees to make canoes lest the spirits should 



142 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

kill them. The natives of Berar in India wi]l not even 
use dead wood; the Siamese offer cakes and rice to the 
takhien tree before they fell it. while, in hke custom, 
the Austrian peasant begs pardon of a tree before his 
axe touches it, and the Irish rustic vdYi not cut down 
the white thorn, because the crown of thorns which 
tortured Jesus was said to have been made from it. 
An old writer of the seventeenth centur}^ says that 
''when an oake is being felled it gives a kind of shriekes 
or groanes that may be heard a mile off as if it were the 
genius of the oake lamenting." Turning to classic 
ground, the ancient Roman farmer, before clearing the 
soil of trees, fearing the anger of their spirits, sought 
to appease them ^dth sacrince and prayer, and the 
Greek woodman of today, as he phes his axe and 
causes the tree to tremble to its fall, throws himself 
facewards on the sfround lest the Drvad driven out of 
the tree should see and punish him. 

Like all unlettered people in their behefs. he did not 
invent this; it came do^^m. with other primitive ideas, 
from remote times when his forefathers peopled sea, 
stream, tree and hill with nymphs; Xaiads of the 
springs, Oreads of the mountains. Dryads of the trees, 
and Nereids of the deep waters; n}Tnphs of whom an 
ancient hymn sings: 



NATURE-WORSHIP 143 

"At their birth there sprang up pine trees or tall-crested oaks 
on the fruitful earth, flourishing and fair, and on the lofty moun- 
tains they stand and are called the groves of the immortal Gods 
which in nowise doth man cut do\\Ti with the steel. But when 
the fate of death approaches, first do the fair trees wither on 
the ground, and the bark about them moulders, and the twigs 
fall down, and even as the tree perishes so the soul of the nymph 
leaves the light of the sun." 

In the last words of these lovely lines there is the old 
behef that the fate of the spirit is wrapped up with 
that of the tree. So is the fate of man and the for- 
tunes of the harvest, leading to a heap of customs to 
secure the help of the tree and plant spirits; from the 
sacrifice of human beings and scattering their remains 
over the fields to the kindher festivals which have 
lived on in Jack-in- the- Green and other May-Day 
frohcs. All life being the same to the savage, he be- 
lieves that he has descended from trees as well as from 
animals, and the belief has survived in many forms. 
In the Greek legend the god Zeus made a race of men 
from the ash; in Norse legend the sons of Bor took two 
trees and made men out of them; in the Mexican, one 
of its lines of famous kings was said to be the offspring 
of two trees. Some of the great gods, Tota in Mexico; 
Jupiter Feretrius (oak god) in Rome; Dionysus in 
Greece, were worshipped in tree form. Then among 
different peoples we read of World Life-Trees, like the 



144 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Yggdrasil of Norse myth, the tree of fate and knowl- 
edge, remmding us of the Tree of Knowledge of the 
Bible story, which, like some other legends in the Book 
of Genesis, is borrowed from Babvlonian sources. 

This Httle book could be more than filled with talk 
about tree worship and all to which it has led. ^luch 
could be said about the sacred groves of savage and 
historic lands, from those of Africa to Britain, home of 
the Druids, and about all the rites carried on in them 
to ward off or cure diseases and avert other troubles, 
but there is only one interesting thing which I can stop 
to name, and that is that ages before temples, ^-ith the 
images of the gods in them, were built, forests were 
used as temples. One proof of this is, so a learned Ger- 
man tells us, that the word temple means t^'ocJ. The 
Latin templum means something ''cut off.'" that is, set 
apart as sacred. There the gods were sought; there 
were the spots whither man brought his offerings to 
them and invoked their help. In this, as in other 
things, we and early man come near together, for the 
noble trees and the richly coloured, fragrant flowers 
that spring from the Earth ^lother can never fail to 
dehght both young and old, and to make the thought- 
ful feel how near akin is their hfe to ours. A great 
poet has confessed, and who can gainsay him? 



NATURE WORSHIP 145 

'Tis my belief that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes. 

H. Man. Men have worshipped other men: living 
ones only rarely; and dead ones who, as is believed, 
live in the spirit land, nearly all the world over. But 
what I have to say about this will more fitly be told in 
the twenty-seventh chapter, which deals with the belief 
in a soul and a future life. 



XXIV 

BELIEF IN MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT 

All the rites and ceremonies that mankind practise 
have for their object the winning of the favour, or 
warding-off the wrath, of gods and lesser spirits. And 
as the man who was the chief of the tribe became so 
because he was the strongest in body, the most fearless 
hunter and the bravest fighter, so the man who was 
most shrewd and agile of brain, who laid claim to 
''occult" that is, to hidden power, became the magic- 
worker. The tribefolk beHeved that he had power 
over the unseen and dreaded; he may sometimes have 
believed it himself, and hence their ready yielding 
to that power. Magic-worker, wizard or sorcerer, 
"medicine man" or priest, for he is called by one 
or other of these names in different countries, he per- 
suaded the people that he could make rain or sunshine, 
cause or cure diseases, which, like death itself, are 
beHeved by savage races to be thQ work of evil spirits; 
foretell events, cast spells and charms over men and 

women, so that they often died through sheer fright; 

146 



BELIEF IN MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT 147 

bewitch them by getting possession of their hair- 
cuttings or nail-parings, or saHva, or, what seems to us 
oddest of all, finding out their name, which is in savage 
behef, a part of a man's self, and therefore kept hidden 
lest black magic be worked by him who gets to know 
it; change himself into animals and plants; work him- 
self into a frenzy, which to others was proof that he 
was in close touch with unseen powers. In short, 
there is, among the lower races,' no event in their Hves 
which does not fall to the magic-worker to control, 
because he works on their hopes and fears. White 
Magic is when he uses his power for a good purpose; 
Black Magic is when he uses it for a bad one. And the 
essence of magic is behef in numberless spirits every- 
where who possess non-natural power, hnked to the 
behef that the sorcerer has power to make these 
spirits do his bidding. So he has a very good time, 
and plenty to do. Ages back, when one man did 
many things, he was both sorcerer and priest, but in 
the course of time it fell to the one to work all the 
marvels of the magic art, and to the priest to offer 
sacrifices and prayers, and otherwise lead the people 
in their worship of their gods. Medicine-men, rain- 
makers, wizards, conjurors, and sorcerers, these have 
abounded everywhere; and even among us now there 



\ ^ 



148 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

are found, under other names, people who think that 
they have power with the unseen and that they know 
more about the unknown than has ever been or will be 
given to man to find out. 

This belief in magical arts, which is firmly rooted 
among the lowest tribes of mankind, has only within 
the last two hundred years died out among civilized 
people, and even lingers still in out-of-the-way places 
among the fooKsh and ignorant, who are always ready 
to see a miracle in everything that they cannot under- 
stand. Connected with it is the horrid belief in witch- 
craft, through which many thousands of innocent 
people have been burned! The last victim in England 
was a poor man who was swum by a mob just sixty 
years ago. The suspected person was flung into water, 
and the guilt was proved if he or she floated. Witch- 
craft spread with a beHef in the devil, who being 
looked upon as the enemy of God and man, was re- 
garded as the cause of all the evil in the world, which 
he worked either by himself or by the aid of agents. 
It was held that persons had sold themselves to him, 
he in return promising that they should for the time 
being lack nothing, and should have power to torment 
man and woman and child and beast. If anyone, 
therefore, felt strange pains; if any sad loss came; it 



BELIEF IN MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT 149 

was believed to be the maliceful work of witches. It 
was they who caused the devastating storm; the ruin 
to the crops; the sudden death of the cattle; and when 
anyone pined away in sickness, it was because some 
old witch had cast her evil eye upon him or made a 
waxen image of him and set it before the fire, that 
the sick man might waste away as it melted. The 
poor creatures who were charged with thus being in 
league with the devil were sought for chiefly among 
helpless old women. To have a wrinkled face, a hairy 
lip, a squint eye, a hobbling gait, a squeaking voice, a 
scolding tongue; to Hve alone: these were thought 
proofs enough, and to these miserable victims torture 
was applied so cruelly that death was a welcome re- 
lease. 

What is called Divination is a branch of Magic. 
It works in two ways: i. In seeking knowledge of the 
future by watching the movements of the heavenly 
bodies or by dreams and unlooked-for happenings; 
and 2. By killing an animal and inspecting its inside. 
Among both savage and ancient peoples the liver was 
most often chosen as the sign-giver because it was 
believed to be the seat of the soul. In an old Baby- 
lonian book it is said: "If the signs of the liver of the 
animal can be read, the mind of the god becomes 



150 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

clear. To read the god's mind is to know the fu- 
ture." 

Taboo. Before we leave Magic, something must be 
said about taboo (a word borrowed from the Polyne- 
sians). This means the setting of something apart 
which must not be touched or eaten or trespassed upon; 
or the hedging round of certain men, as chiefs or priests, 
so that they may be kept wholly apart from the 
common people. Those who broke taboo were threat- 
ened with curses and severe punishment, the effect of 
which often was that the offender fell sick and died of 
sheer funk. As an example of this, some New Zealand 
natives found and used a tinder-box, not knowing who 
was the owner, and when they heard that it belonged 
to their chief they all died of fright. 

One chief object of taboo was to protect food and 
property from being stolen, and hence shells, ropes and 
other things would be put round trees and gardens. 
In Samoa a stick was hung crosswise on a tree to sig- 
nify to anyone stealing the fruit that he would have 
a disease through his body, and remain fixed to the 
tree till he died. Banana leaves were put near a door- 
less hut to show that it must not be entered, and 
branches laid across a road as a warning, just as now- 
a-days we read at the entrance to private properties 



BELIEF IN MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT 151 

''Notice: Trespassers will be prosecuted." In East 
Africa no one dare steal from a smith, because he 
knows how, when heating his furnace with the bellows, 
to put such a curse on the thief that he dies. Then 
stones were put up to mark the ownership of land, 
and hence were beheved to be sacred. Everywhere 
boundaries are marked in some way, and in ancient 
Rome one of the chief deities. Terminus, as god of 
boundaries, shared the great temple on the Capitol 
with Jupiter, and all over the country festivals were 
held in his honour. Even the names of people were 
sometimes tabooed, because as already told you, it 
was beHeved that to disclose them was to put the 
named in the power of another. It is a world-wide 
belief that to name the dead will cause them to appear, 
hence they are even more tabooed than the living. 
In some religions the real name of the god may not 
be uttered, and another name is used. As I write this, 
I read in a newspaper that a number of monks have 
been expelled from a famous monastery on Mt. Athos, 
in Greece, because they say that the name of God is 
an actual part of God Himself. But a long chapter 
would be needed to tell of all the superstitions that 
have gathered round names. 

It was round chiefs and priests and sacred places 



152 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

that the taboo is made a ring-fence. Chiefs were 
looked upon as gods: no one dare touch them, they 
were beheved to have magic powers. In the East and 
in ancient Rome Emperors were worshipped as gods, 
and long after then people continued to believe in the 
divine right of kings. Sorcerers or medicine-men, are 
sacred, and, still more so, the places where the spirits 
dwell: a behef which still Hves on in the idea that a 
church is a sacred place, and that a house is not. 

But taboo, while it did much mischief, for the belief 
in the power of a curse has brought terror and real 
harm to numberless innocent people, did some good in 
safeguarding Hfe and property where these were in- 
secure, and in paving the way for the laws which are 
made by every people for the common good. 



XXV 

FETISH WORSHIP AND IDOLATRY 

The very lowest form of worship is that paid to Kfe- 
less things in which some power is thought to dwell, 
and is called "fetish" worship, from a Portuguese word 
meaning. a charm. It does not matter what the object 
is; it may be a stone of curious shape, the stump of a 
tree with the roots turned up, even an old hat or a red 
rag, so long as some good is supposed to be had, or 
some evil to be thwarted, through it. So offerings and 
prayers are made to the stone or stump as the thing 
which the spirit is believed to occupy. Each man may 
have his own fetish, or there may be a fetish of the 
tribe; in either case the spirit inside the thing is ob- 
tained by the help of the village sorcerer. 

The customs of worshipping a fetish as the abode of 
a spirit and of setting up an idol, although they may 
appear the same in their purpose, are different in prac- 
tice. The word "idol" comes from a Greek word 
meaning an image or form; for, unlike the fetish, it is 
often cut or carved in some sort of shape. The mate- 

153 



154 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

rials out of which different races shape their gods show 
us what their ideas are. These may be mere bundles of 
grass or rudely daubed stones, or carved with the care 
and detail displayed in the household idols of the 
East. If the god is beHeved in as all-powerful, a huge 
image will be built, to which will be given a score of 
arms and legs, the head of a lion, the feet of a stag, and 
the wings of a bird. Sometimes the images were made 
hollow so that the priests could get inside them and 
speak through them, the people believing that it was 
the god himself who spoke, whence perhaps came be- 
lief in oracles, as among the Druids and ancient Greeks 
and Eg^^tians. Sometimes it is treated as only an 
image or symbol of the god or gods believed in, and is 
not mistaken for the god itself. But it has frequently 
been regarded by savages and the ignorant as a god, 
and beHeved to hear prayer, to accept gifts, and have 
power to bless or curse, and then it plays the part of a 
fetish. It is held to blame if its owner does not get 
what he wants. The Negro beats his idol if he has no 
luck: the Ostyak of Northern Asia thrashes his if he 
kills no game; the Chinese drag theirs in the dirt till 
they get what they want; then they clean and regild 
them. There is an amusing story of a Chinaman who 
paid an idol to cure his daughter, but she died, so he 



FETISH WORSHIP AND IDOLATRY 155 

brought an action against it, and it was banished from 
the temple. There are many other stories of idols 
maltreated for not doing what their worshippers wanted, 
while as showing how real they are to them, we read of 
Russian peasants covering up the pictures of a saint 
so that he should not see them do wrong; and of Italian 
robbers praying to images of the Virgin Mary for 
success, and promising her a share of the plunder. 

Idol worship is not universal: it is rather late in 
man's history; it is absent or rare among many savage 
races, and is forbidden among Mohammedans, Jews, 
and Protestant Christians. 



XX\'I 

SACRIFICE .\XD PILWER 

I. Sacrifice. The reason for offering sacrinces is ex- 
plained by man's dealings with his fellow-man. 

When we feel that we have vexed our friends, or that 
for some cause they are angr}* with us. our first desire 
is to remove the ano:er bv an offering: of some kind: 
while towards those to whom we feel grateful for their 
kindness, we show our love and thanks bv s^'ts. 

In this way, sacrifices or offerings to the dead, both 
to supply their supposed needs, and to appease their 
spirits; to idols; and to the seen and unseen powers of 
good and e\il, began; and have continued in different 
forms among aU nations to the present day. One kind 
of sacrifice is offered from a feeling of thanksgi^ing; an- 
other as a bribe to quiet or appease the gods thought to 
be angr}', and who. being looked upon as big men, 
were thereby supposed to be humoured like cross and 
sulky people. 

A large number of sacrifices were made to the gods to 
insure their help; so that the har\"ests might be abun- 
dant, and the flocks and herds multiplied. Of course 

i;6 



SACRIFICE AND PRAYER 157 

men would ofTer the best of what they had, and would 
pick the finest fruits and flowers as gifts to the gods, or 
burn upon a raised pile of stones called an altar the 
most spotless of their flocks. Sometimes the sacrifice 
takes the form of a meal shared with the gods, who are 
believed to enjoy the essence of the thing offered as it 
ascends to them in the smoke (see p. 129). Often, be- 
lieving thereby to win the favour of the gods, men 
mutilate and starve themselves, and work themselves 
into a state of frenzy whereby they lose all self-control. 
In village festivals of the gods in the East, when ex- 
citement runs high, they will pierce their tongues wath 
skewers, and the skin of their backs with hooks on 
which they swing in mad dance to the beating of tom- 
toms. And because the surrender of the nearest and 
dearest was often thought necessary to allay the anger, 
or secure the help, or ward off the vengeance, of the 
god, the lives of dear ones were offered, and this is one 
of the chief causes of the hideous and revolting rites 
which curdle one's blood to read about, and of which 
every land and every age have been the spectators. It 
was the appalling story of human sacrifices that made 
a great Roman poet utter bitter words about the cruel 
deeds which rehgion could prompt men to commit. 
2. Prayer. To cry for help when we are in danger 



158 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

is our first act; to ask for what we want from those 
who seem able and -filling to give it is both natural 
and right. So man prayed to his gods, and prays still, 
for to the end of time the deep long cry of mankind to 
"blocks of wood and stone" and to the unseen powers 
around and above him will continue. Rude and hide- 
ous as may be the idol to which the poor savage tells 
his story of need or sorrow, we must stand in awe as we 
think of the soul within him that hungers for its food, 
even as the body hungers for the bread that perisheth. 
Of course he prays in his ignorance for many weak and 
fooHsh things, to grant which would be really hurtful 
to him. In this he is like children who ask their par- 
ents for something which those parents know is not 
good for them, and who think themselves badly treated 
because they are denied it. x\t its lowest, prayer is 
offered for the needs of tlie body, as when the Xorth 
American Indian asks his god Wohkonda to help him 
to be able to take scalps or capture horses; or as w^hen 
the Gold Coast negro asks his god to give him plenty 
of rice and yams and gold; or as when people in 
churches pray for rain, or, in time of war, that God 
will give them the \ictory over their enemies, who are 
also pra}dng to him to give theyn the \'ictory. 

At its highest, prayer is offered to satisfy the hunger 



SACRIFICE AND PRAYER 159 

of the soul. All of us know what is called the Lord's 
Prayer, and here are two ancient prayers wherein what 
is asked for may find an echo in our hearts. One of 
them is the prayer of Agur in the Proverbs of Solomon 
(XXX. 7-9). 

"Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not 
before I die. Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me 
neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for 
me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, who is the Lord? or 
lest I be poor and take the Name of my God in vain." 

Older than this is one uttered, perhaps more as a 
pious wish rather than to any god supposed to hear, by 
*a Greek whose name is unknown. 

"May I never devise evil against any man, if any devise evil 
against me, may I escape uninjured and without the need of 
hurting him. j\Iay I love, seek and attain only to that which 
is good. ]\Iay I wish for all men's happiness and envy none. 
May I never rejoice in the ill-fortune of one who has wronged 
me. . . . JNIay I to the extent of my power, give all needful 
help to my friends and to all who are in want. When visiting 
those in grief may I be able by gentle and healing words to 
soften their pain. May I accustom myself to be gentle and 
never be angry because of circumstances. May I never discuss 
who is wdcked and what wicked things he has done, but know 
good men and follow in their footsteps." 

When I read this, I thought of the wise words of a 
friend who said, "Who rises from prayer a better man, 
his prayer is answered." 



XXVII 

ANIMISM: MAN'S IDEAS ABOUT THE SOUL 
AND A FUTURE LIFE 

I. The Soul. We have learnt that because man saw 
all nature to be in motion, he believed that spirits 
dwelt in all, hence the world-wide behef in what is 
called Animism (from Latin, anima, Hfe or soul). 
Words come in to tell us what in the course of time 
was man's notion about a soul. The difference be- 
tween the Hving and dead is this: the living man 
breathes and moves; the dead man has ceased to 
breathe and is still. Now the word spirit means 
breath, and in the leading languages of the world the 
word used for soul or spirit is that which signifies 
breath or wind. But the learned and the ignorant 
alike have not, nor is it possible that anyone ever can 
have, any clear idea about the soul. The common no- 
tion is that at death it leaves the body as a sort of 
filmy thing or shadow or vapour. The Congo negroes 
leave the house of the dead unswept for a year lest 

the dust should injure the dehcate substance of the 

1 60 



ANIMISM i6i 

ghost; English, Chinese, and Indians alike will keep 
some door or window open through which the depart- 
ing soul may leave, and it is a German saying that a 
door should not be slamm^ed lest a soul be pinched in it! 

The savage thinks that the spirit can leave the body 
during sleep, and so w^hatever happens to him in his 
dreams seems as real and true as if it had taken place 
while he was awake. If he sees some dead friend in his 
sleep, he beheves either that the dead have come to 
him or that his spirit has been on a visit to his friend, 
and he is very careful not to awake anyone sleeping 
lest the soul should happen to be away from the body. 
This idea of his "other self," as it has been called, 
would be quickened by seeing his reflection in water, 
by his shadow, which the Fijians called ''the dark 
spirit," by the mocking echo of his voice, and other 
things. BeHeving that a man's soul could go in and 
out of his body, it was also thought that demons could 
be drawn in with the breath, and that yawning and 
sneezing were proofs of their presence. So what is 
called an invocation was spoken to ward them off, of 
which we have a trace in the custom of saying "God 
bless you" when anyone sneezes. 

According to an old Jewish legend, "The custom of 
saying 'God bless you' when a person sneezes dates 



1 62 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

from Jacob. The Rabbis say that before the time that 
Jacob lived, men sneezed once and that was the end of 
them; the shock slew them. This law was set aside at the 
prayer of Jacob on condition that in all nations a sneeze 
should be hallowed by the words ' God bless you.' " 

Diseases were said to be caused, among other things, 
by the soul staying away too long from the body, and 
the bringing of it back is a part of the priest's or wiz- 
ard's work. Among all the peoples of Borneo it is be- 
lieved that when anyone is very ill the soul has left the 
body, and a soul-catcher is sent for to recapture it. 
He shows something small in which he pretends that 
the soul is lodged; this he puts on the sick person's 
head and rubs it in, thus making believe that the soul 
has re-entered the body. If the patient dies, his rela- 
tives shout in his ear, ''Come back; here we have food 
ready for you." Savages dread having their portraits 
taken, because they think that this takes their souls 
out of themselves. When a French doctor was in 
Madagascar and photographed some of the natives, 
they accused him of taking their souls to sell when he 
left, and, to pacify them, he had to pretend to catch 
the souls in a basket and return them to the people 
whom he had photographed. 

All these ideas, crude as they are, Hve on among 



ANIMISM 163 

people long after they have risen from savagery, and in 
fact remain among us, although their first meaning is 
hidden in such sayings as a man being "out of his 
mind," or "beside himself," or "come to himself." If 
the body has suffered any loss in limb or otherwise, the 
soul is thought to be maimed too. And the belief that 
it will need, after it leaves the body, all the things 
which it has had here explains the custom of kilHng 
wives and slaves to follow the deceased; and, as among 
very low races Hfeless things are said to have souls, of 
placing clothes, weapons, and ornaments in the grave 
for the dead person's use in another world. It is 
within a very few years that in Europe the soldier's 
horse that follows his dead master in the funeral pro- 
cession was shot and buried with him. 

Man regarding himself as surrounded by spirits, 
dwelling in everything and all-powerful to do him good 
or harm, shaped his notions about them as they seemed 
to smile or frown upon him. Not only did he look 
upon sickness as often the work of demon spirits, but 
in his fear he filled the darkness with ghosts of the 
dead rising from their graves, shrieking at his door, 
sitting in his house, tapping him on the shoulder, and 
breaking the silence with their squeaking or whistHng 
tones. Even today the report that a ghost has been 



164 THE CHILDHOOD GJ lEX WORLD 

seen will draw cro~ds : : iiie sp :t. and many people are 
afraid to sleep ia a room which is said to be haunted. 
For there is in aU of us a certain amount of fear, which 
has come down to m5 fr : rtmote forefathers and 
which is aroused when anything unsuspec:^ i : -rp^zis. 
It "makes us jump" is ~~ siy. Knc .tl^t "i 
knowledge only. ir. es i— ly behe: in bogevs i^i 
ghosts, and other ri: -1: ii :Jii:ip. 

2. The Future Life. Z'zz rude behefs about ^irits 
ill irrizi; mi the custozii :':5er\-ed at burials, show 
us that, however shapeless —in '5 idea of another life 
may be. he has frizi :i.r t:i:1: r: TiiiirS Ttirved that 
the spirit or breath. :Jir rl: :s: liiji :;zies irizi tie 
same root i 5 : : 1 11::- :: 'i-^z'l rlse-:v-here when the 
bod^- 15 cold and still iu deatlu Tlir l:i:jirst and lowest 
r^res :: zit:i ji: e tried to form sir r. don of what 
:iii: iItssti _::- e is like where hariiiirss is given to the 
g : 1 -\irrr zrirnds *"loved long since and lost awhile,''' 
-ttIL. ^:':i sziilizg mgel faces, welcome us; or what that 
Cj-t^ si^.r ziiy be wlcre ziiserv- and wanhope (des^^ir^ 
dwelL As sa\-age5 beheve that both diseases and 
death are due to sorcerers or to e\-il spirits, they do 
not, as "s-e do, draw an\' line berireen rr.is worid and 
another; the dead are thought of as continuing their life 
here in srhostlv form. The belief that the soul can live 



ANIMISM 165 

apart from the body and that animals, plants and life- 
less things have souls, makes easy the passage to or be- 
lief in what is called Transmigration, or the transfer of 
a man's soul to another man, or to an animal, plant or 
lifeless thing. And this belief survives in some of the 
higher religions, as in Hinduism and Buddhism. The 
deeds that anyone does in this life rule his fate in the 
next. In India the thief who steals gold will become a 
rat; the cruel become some blood-thirsty beast; in 
Africa the souls of good men become snakes, and the 
souls of bad men jackals. So deeply-rooted is the feel- 
ing that the dead are alive and even more powerful to 
help or harm because their spirits, free from their bodies 
can wander whither they choose, that the worship of 
ancestors is one of the oldest and most widely spread of 
all cults (Latin, cultus, "worship," and also 'HilKng," 
as in our word ''cultivate"). In India, to this day, the 
making of dead men into gods goes on among the 
lower tribes. Even in their lifetime men renowned 
as powerful or holy have been worshipped, and well 
nigh every people has its culture-hero who is adored 
as ha\ing founded cities, brought knowledge of farm- 
ing, or of working in metals, or who, like Prome- 
theus, stole fire from heaven for the use of men; or 
who, lilie Cadmus, taught them the alphabet. 



i66 rZZ CHILDHOOD OI TZZ ";'^"~ 

In the honours paid to the dead in China ancestor- 
worsliq> reaches its hi^iest pitch. From time to :izie 
tltre :^7 7 1 notices in the Pekin Gasette^ the oldest 
~t~5iiirr 'JL :ir wodd, that this or that dead persin 
15 ;: n :ti : jiir^i rank, or made a god. In 19c 7 :Jie 
ZZ177::: :: rin:::^ is5 ri a decree that tbt :izi: 5 5:^re 
C : - f_: :: IS ~7z ^ - i five hundred yeais : r: rt Ckrist, 
sJ: .iLi 'z- riisri :: ::ii ze level of the snn 1:1 i :: : on to 
tit - T^ :: ".'it JiT t- :nd the earth, - i lis ?pirit 
r:"tz 1 z.i:t -:.:.^'. :: :Ji^: :: the dead ei:i':Tr::s :::t::> 



pir:e-i 1:11 ^-"."r :::izks to them £.s Tiiist tJiriurJ-. ""_;5.e 
he^ the victories In :er" riir-Ti Zu: t i.rrl not 

go to the Far East ::r ex in "Its. .--:':i:::i: ziiZHons of 

Romi-Z Ciitii_iis 1"! "'.'"''' 1 " -■'• ' " ^ ■::i7 ~:rsi-'"^ of 



;:i7-t:s z.nd offerizrs irt niie 10 iiie~i: „-i tteir 
c'_r:i- 1^1 res hell s: st-rrt-i ULat thdr giai'res jift ':e- 
cinr lit sitts :; inriits i^'l tsmples. In lucLl uie- 
nmf Laey were beiievei :: t stss nigical power, as 
we rtii in the Acts of :lr ..7 : ts ,XIX. 12) about 
Siir: P-til that "frcn lis 1 :i "re brou^t unto the 
sill '". :bie£s and ::':::is ti£ tie 'iiseisc-s .ft- 



ANIMISM 167 

parted from them, and the evil spirits went out of 
them." In Roman Catholic churches every altar must 
have witliin it the rehcs of a saint, so for hundreds of 
years there has been ceaseless demand for rehcs, espe- 
cially those of martyrs. One relic most coveted is a 
piece of the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, 
and wliich was said to have been discovered by the 
Empress Helena, mother of Constantine. Little frag- 
ments of it were given to the most important churches. 
But these and numberless other rehcs, many of which 
are believed to work miracles, are frauds. Quite a 
large trade in them was carried on between Europe and 
the East. Only two years ago, the priests of St. John's 
Roman CathoHc church in New York were grief 
stricken because a part of the sepulchre in which 
Jesus was laid, a piece of the rope with which he was 
scourged, and other rehcs, were stolen. Shortly before 
then a Prince offered £800,000 for the remains of 
Nicholas, the patron saint of Russia. Louis the Ninth 
of France, who lived in the tliirteenth century, built a 
famous chapel wherein were preserved a piece of the 
Cross, the rod of Moses, a portion of the baby linen of 
Jesus, of the lance, chain and sponge of his Passion, 
and a part of the skull of Saint John the Baptist. 
Herein, as in so much else, the civilized is one with the 



1 68 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

savage who carries about with him the skull bones of his 
ancestor as a charm against e^Tl spirits and sorcerers. 
But so endless is the chapter of man's credulity (Lat. credo, 
to believe) that a big book could be nlled with a list of the 
rehcs in the churches and monasteries of Europe alone. 
"\MiLle amons hio^her races we find the ideas about an 
after-life and another world less crude than amonsr 
lower races, they have one thing in common. They put 
into shape what they most desire; their pictures of 
heaven perforce are copied from the earth; and all that 
the}' love here, whether chaste or coarse, they hope to 
have in larger measure there, even as they wish to shut 
out from thence all that they dread now. The thought 
that the two worlds are thus linked together is ver}- 
beautifully expressed in one of the old Persian sacred 
books. The soul of a good man is pictured as being 
met in the other world by a lovely maiden, *'" noble, 
with brilliant face, one of iifteen years, as fair in her 
growth as the fairest creatures. Then to her speaks the 
soul of the pure man, asking. "AMiat maiden art thou 
whom I have seen here as the fairest of maidens in 
body?' She answers, *I am. youth, thy good thoughts, 
words, and works, thy good law, thine own law of 
thine own body. Thou hast made the pleasant yet 
pleasanter to me, the fair yet fairer.' '' 



ANIMISM 169 

Man has placed his heaven in some far-off Island of 
the Blest, or in some sunny land, 

"Deep meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns 
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea." 

Or he has thought of the soul as departing to the 
west where the sun sets, or to the sun, moon, and stars 
themselves. This explains the Christian custom of 
burying the body with its head to the west, so that at 
the resurrection day it should rise looking towards the 
east; a custom also found among the ancient Greeks 
and other peoples. 



XXVIII 
POLYTHEISM: OR BELIEF IN MANY GODS 

I HAVE dwelt on the importance of your remembering 
that there has never been any break in the history of 
man, whether as Worker or Thinker. This makes clear 
why his ideas about things melt one into the other, so 
that he has never wholly got rid of his old behefs in 
advancing to newer ones. 

Among the higher races we find the belief in swarms 
of spirits leading up to a behef in groups of great gods, 
each ruKng some part of nature. Such are Wind, 
Rain, Thunder and Air Gods; Forest, River, and Sea 
Gods; Seedtime and Harvest Gods; Gods of War, Dis- 
ease, Death and the Underworld, and so on through a 
long bewildering hst. Much that I have said already 
about nature-worsliip appHes to the worship of these 
deities, and need not be repeated. In ancient Eg}pt 
each nome or pro\ince had its own god; among the 
Hebrews, Jehovah was a god among other gods, be- 
coming a chief, and, later on, the only god; in Rome, 

gods from other lands were admitted to a place in her 

170 



POLYTHEISM 171 

Pantheon (Greek pan^ all; and theos, a god), the num- 
ber becoming so large as to give rise to a witty saving 
that the city was too thickly peopled with them to 
leave room for men. 

Polytheism, therefore, included various beliefs; it 
rarely led to disputes as to whether one god was true, 
and all the others false; and a long time passed before 
men quarrelled over these matters and that so bitterly 
as to burn their fellow creatures for ''heresy." (Greek 
haireo, to choose, that is, to think for one's self.) 

It is in Polytheism that belief in gods as ''non- 
natural" men takes shape. Tr^dng to imagine what 
they must be like, man could not make the gods in any 
other image than his own. There was nothing else 
with which to compare them, and this anthropomor- 
phism, as it is called (Greek anthropos, man, and 
morphe, shape) runs through all the higher religions. 
Xenophanes, an old Greek writer, who lived five hun- 
dred years before Christ, shrewdly says: "Men think 
that the gods were born as men were born, and that 
they have forms, countenances and habits, such as mor- 
tals have. The Ethiopian makes his god black, and the 
Thracian makes him blue-eyed and blond. And if ani- 
mals had hands wherewith to fashion images, as men 
have done, they would give to the gods animal shapes 



172 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

like their own: and the gods of horses would have the 
shape of horses, and those of oxen the shape of oxen." 
But, Xenophanes adds, there is but One Supreme God, 
who is like mortals neither in body nor in thought. As 
showing that the Hebrew conceived of God as a sort of 
ver}' big man, the Book of Genesis narrates how he 
walked in the garden of Eden, sp}-ing out whether 
Adam and Eve were di5obe}'ing his commands, while 
in another book we are told that God helped Judah to 
drive out the inhabitants of the mountains, but that he 
*■ could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, be- 
cause they had chariots of iron."' (Judges I. 19.) 

When we read these and many other stories of the 
like kind in the early books of the Bible describing God 
as doing and appro^■TQg actions which all right-minded 
people woiild shrink from doing, we must keep in mind 
that they are of value in telling us what crude notions 
about God were held at the time those books were writ- 
ten. Many centuries passed before the Jews ad- 
vanced to the higher ideas which we find in the later 
books of the Old Testament, as in some of the Psalms 
and prophetic writings. 



XXIX 
DUALISM, OR BELIEF IN TWO GODS 

Man, as he came to think more and more about 
things, and not to be simply frightened into an un- 
reasoning worship of n\ing and dead objects, lessened 
stiU further the number of ruling powers, and advanced 
to a belief in two mighty gods fighting for mastery 
over himself and the universe. Becoming by degrees 
conscious of himself as a person, his gods were con- 
ceived of more clearly as persons, and became reduced 
in number. 

On the one hand was a power that appeared to 
dwell in the calm, unclouded blue, and with kind and 
lo\ing heart to scatter welcome gifts upon men; on 
the other hand was a power that appeared to be harsh 
and cruel, that lashed the sea into fury, covered earth 
and sky with blackness, swept man's home and crops 
away in torrent and in tempest, chilled him with icy 
hand, and gave his children to the beasts of prey. One 
a god of Hght, smiling in the sunbeam; the other a god 
of darkness, scowling in the thundercloud; one ruling 

173 



174 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

by good and gentle spirits, the other by fierce and evil 
spirits. And behef in these lesser spirits doing the 
bidding of the Powers of Good and E\dl has never 
wholly died out save among people who may rightly 
claim to be ci\dlized. 

Many rehgions contain traces of duahsm; as, for 
example, in ancient Eg^-pt we find Osiris the good god 
and Sat, the e\dl god, who like all such, had more wor- 
ship paid to him because people were afraid of him; 
and in Madagascar today the good god Zamhor and 
the e\il god Nyang. But it takes more complete shape 
in the old Indo-European religions. In the Scan- 
dina\dan we find Baldur, the god of fight, and Loki, 
god of darkness, who was father of the goddess Hel, 
w^hose name meaning "to cover," or "conceal," has 
been given to the dark under^^orld of the wicked. 
In the old Hindu rehgion, Indra, the god of the day, 
struggles with Vritra, the god of night and evil things. 
From this may have sprung the very ancient Persian 
befief in Ahura-Magda or Ormuzd, the god of fight, who 
wages ceaseless war with Angra Mainya, or Ahriman, 
the god of darkness. That befief, which gave birth to a 
noble creed urging men to fight the e\il and practise 
the good, has interest for us, because when the Jews 
were captives in Babylon, the great home of belief in 



DUALISM 175 

crowds of demons, they borrowed the idea of a Chief 
Spirit of evil, to whom the name Satan was given. 
Before then they beheved that their god Jehovah sent 
both good and evil, but in the course of time Satan, or 
the Devil, was looked upon as a mighty power, wander- 
ing up and down the earth "like a roaring Hon seeking 
whom he may devour" and employing crowds of 
demons to tempt men to evil and drag them down to 
hell. And it is only in the last few years that this 
belief in the devil and his angels, which terrified people 
for hundreds of years, has died out except where 
ignorance and fear still prevail. 



XXX 

MOxoiHz:^:.: -r hziiz? ix <:xz (^od 

We come acn^s faint traces of t Jii: looks like belief 
in a Higli or Supreme God among sizir si - iges^ but 
that name has been given hj mis^onadeS; and is mis- 

leadizr sjire it is loimd to cover only cruie iiras 
abo-.: :Jir rrti: *: i^eis of Mature. Sometin 5 :Jiis 
idea :: 1:it Irir: : Spirit has been g.^c :: niss: -irv 

tesc-iinr. ui.i liicii it is di^c^iilt to scp^Lza^ic Hn^dve 

bcjiicis :r:r2 tlicse "^hich h£'.'t iiiir fr-?r!i i^'iitsi'^'r. 

For exMikpAe. il was tiiou^'n: 1:11 : :::r ::___: "i:": i: 

lerr-d 5b?~ed that tr? Polynes: -5 zii rr -i : r 

ii:>:i srirt :: Monctritiszi in wimL inxiy said aoout 

tZti: r i. Taarci ~i5. Taaioa "zs his ~i:::ie: he 

c~t^: i:i :lr * ::i. No earth, no sk^ r.: :::rr_ 7 1: . 

C1Z5 :u: " lu^'::: a~i~ers, and a!:~r ezisinr zt zt- 

cizir :Zr uzi rrse. The props are Turn. :Jir :::Zs 

arr 7. ira, the sands are Taaroa; it is thus hr 7 : ::r - 

5t7 i.azirl- He founded the world as a sohd rock, 

" :7 : 7 : e his wife, the foundation of all things, 

who gave birth to earth and sea," But when it was 

176 



MONOTHEISM . 177 

discovered that the name of the rock is Papa, the 
Earth, it was clear that we have in the legend the old, 
old story of the great first parents of all that is. 
Heaven and Earth. Here and there, as among the 
wisest of the ancient Greeks, we may listen to a voice 
speaking of the unity of God, but in so far as the world's 
great religions are concerned, there are only three 
which proclaim that doctrine — the Jewish, Christian 
and Mohammedan. The Jewish and the Mohammedan 
are more purely monotheistic than the Christian, the 
creed of which is that there are Three Gods in One, 
As already said, many centuries passed before the 
Jews reached to that belief in One God whom we read 
about in the subHme language of some of their prophets, 
Isaiah the chief among these. As they read the 
wonderful stories of what Yahweh or Jehovah had 
done for them, they came to regard themselves as a 
chosen people, a belief which they have held for 
centuries, and which largely explains why they have 
kept themselves apart from other races, refusing to 
marry with them, and even to eat the same food as 
other people. 

It was in this belief in Jehovah that Jesus Christ, 
who was of Jewish birth, was reared. But he gave a 
fuller and more beautiful meaning to it when he spoke 



178 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

of him as All-Father, because that carried with it 
the idea that all mankind are his children. Some time 
after Jesus died, he became, like other great teachers, 
worshipped as a god, and when his Gospel, as it is 
called, spread in countries westwards, where Greek- 
speaking Jews had settled — chiefly in Eg}'pt — it lost 
its simple features and became blended with bewildering 
ideas, the result of which was the doctrine of the 
Trinity; that is, of a Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as 
Three Persons in one God; a doctrine, held in many 
forms by various nations, as shown in the hst at the 
end of this chapter. So important did behef in the 
Trinity become that those w^ho refused to accept it 
were threatened in a creed stUl read in many Christian 
churches with everlasting punishment in hell. No one 
would have been more surprised than Jesus himself if he 
could have known that he was to be worshipped as a 
god; and no one more pained if he could have knovv'n 
that men would fight and kill each other over quarrels 
as to whether he was a god or a man. But very slowly, 
and after many centuries, the world grows wiser and 
kindHer, and people are coming to see that the one 
thing which matters is not the creed that men believe, 
but the deeds of charity and mercy that they perform. 
A simpler creed was proclaimed six hundred years 



MONOTHEISM 179 

after the birth of Jesus by ^Mohammed, who declared 
that God is one. With this there was mixed-up behef 
in sinless angels and jinns or demons under a chief 
devil, but the same belief is held by the larger number 
of Christians, and does not destroy the doctrine of the 
Oneness of God. Two thousand years before Moham- 
med, there reigned in Egypt a King of great piety and 
purity of life, named Akhnaton, so beloved by his 
people that they called him "Lord of the Breath of 
Sweetness." Freeing himself from the power of the 
priests, who were angry because he gave up belief in 
animal, sun and weather-gods, he founded a new city 
where he set up the worship of A ton as the One God. 
He taught the people to pray and sing to that god as 
their Father in heaven and as the Lord of Love and 
Peace. He permitted no image of Aton to be made, 
and the sun's disc, which was his s^Tnbol, was not 
worshipped. But because he hated war and other 
evils, he refused to do battle, and in the end lost his 
kingdom, and "there died with him such a spirit as 
the world had never seen before." 

And the priest-led people returned to their old beliefs, 
wherein is one of many examples in history that religion 
is rarely entirely freed from the lower ideas whence it 
sprung. 



i8o 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 



TRINITIES 



Babylonian. . 


Anu 


Bel 


Ea 




(Lord of Heaven) (Lord of Earth) 


(Lord of the 








underworld) 


Christian . . . . 


Father 


Son 


Holy Ghost 


*Egyptian. . . 


Osiris 


Isis 


Horus 




(Corn — sometimes, 


(his wife) 


(her son) 




Sun- God) 






Greek 


Zeus 


Poseidon 


Hades 




(Heaven-God) 


(Ocean-God) 


(God of the 
underworld) 




Zeus 


Athene 


Apollo 






(Goddess of 


(Sun-God) 






Wisdom) 




fHindu 




Brahma 


Vishnu 


Siva 


and 




(Creator) 


(Preserver) 


(Destroyer) 


Vedic 




Indra 


Sueya 


Agni 




(Sky-God) 


(Sun-God) 


(Fire-God) 


Roman 


Jupiter 


Juno 


Minerva 




(Lord of Heaven) 


(Queen of 


(Goddess of 






Heaven) 


Wisdom) 


Scandinavian 


Odin 


Thor 


Loki 






(All-Father) 


(Thunder-God) (God of Evil) 



* Many of the Egyptian gods were in triads, and some were 
also grouped in enneads or nines. The sculptures of Horus in 
the lap of Isis gave rise to the Catholic images and pictures of 
the Virgin Mary and Jesus. "Isis and Horus ruled the affection 
and worship of Europe with a change of names," and they 
largely rule it still. 

t This is sculptured in the Elephanta caves at Bombay as three 
heads springing from one body. 



XXXI 

THREE STORIES ABOUT ABRAHAM 

Abraham, so we learn from the Book of Genesis, 
was a native of the country called Chaldea. The clear 
sky of that Eastern land invited the people dwelling 
in it to the study of the sun, moon, and stars, and 
they not only worshipped these bodies, but sought to 
foretell the fate of men from them. An ancient histo- 
rian tells us that every Chaldean had a signet and 
staff bearing the sign of the planet or stars that were 
seen at his birth. Some have said that Ur, the city 
where Abraham was born, was a chief seat of sun- 
worship, and that its name means ''hght" or ''fire." 
Hence Abraham's early years were spent among sun- 
worshippers, and it may interest you to know that his 
name and memory are held in high honour, not only by 
the Jews, but also by the Persians and Mohammedans. 
That he was far from being a perfect man is shown in 
the story of his Hfe, but the great value of the biog- 
raphies in the Bible is that they tell the truth. 

Among the stories about him which record an old 

i8i 



1 82 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

belief that he was a monotheist, and which are pre- 
served in an ancient Jewish book, called the Talmud, 
are the following. 

Terah, the father of Abraham, was a maker and dealer 
in idols. Being obKged to go from home one day, he 
left Abraham in charge. An old man came in and 
asked the price of one of the idols. ''Old man," said 
Abraham, "how old art thou?" "Three-score years," 
answered the old man. "Threescore years!" said 
Abraham, "and thou wouldest worship a thing that my 
father's slaves made in a few hours? Strange that a 
man of sixty should bow his gray head to a creature 
such as that." The man, crimsoned with shame, 
turned away; and then came a grave-looking woman 
to bring an offering to the gods. "Give it them 
thyself," said Abraham; "thou wilt see how greedily 
they will eat it." She did so. Abraham then took a 
hammer and broke all the idols except the largest, in 
whose hands he placed the hammer. When Terah 
returned, he asked angrily what profane wretch had 
dared thus to abuse the gods. "Why," said Abraham, 
"during thine absence a woman brought yonder food 
to the gods and the younger ones began to eat. The 
old god, enraged at their boldness, took the hamm^er 
and smashed them." "Dost thou mock thy aged 



THREE STORIES ABOUT ABRAHAM 183 

father?" said Terah; "do I not know that they can 
neither eat nor move?" "And yet," said Abraham, 
"thou worshippest them, and wouldest have me wor- 
ship them too." The story adds that Terah, in his 
rage, sent Abraham to be judged for his crime by the 
king. 

Nimrod asked Abraham: You will not adore the 
idols of your father. Then pray to fire. 

Abraham: Why may I not pray to water, which will 
quench fire? 

Nimrod: Be it so: pray to water. 

Abraham: But why not to the clouds which hold 
the water? 

Nimrod: Well, then, pray to the clouds. 

Abraham: Why not to the wind, which drives the 
clouds before it? 

Nimrod: Then pray to the wind. 

Abraham: Be not angry, King — I cannot pray to 
the fire or the water or the clouds or the wind, but to 
the Creator who made them: him only will I worship. 

On another occasion, "Abraham left a cave in which 
he had dwelt and stood on the face of the desert. 
And when he saw the sun shining in all its glory, he 
was filled with wonder; and he thought, 'Surely the 
sun is God the Creator,' and he knelt down and 



1 84 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

worshipped the sun. But when evening came, the sun 
went down in the west, and Abraham said, 'No, the 
Author of creation cannot set.' Now the moon arose 
in the east, and the stars looked out of the sky. Then 
said Abraham, 'This moon must indeed be God, and 
all the stars are his host.' And kneeling down he 
adored the moon. But the moon set also, and from 
the east appeared once more the sun's bright face. 
Then said Abraham, 'Verily these heavenly bodies are 
no gods, for they obey law; I will worship him whose 
laws they obey.'" 



XXXII 

GREAT TEACHERS 

In an ancient writing whose rare beauty should have 
given it a place among the books making up the Bible, 
there is a roll call of the great and worthy in Hebrew 
history which begins with words I have already quoted: 

"Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that 
begat us.'' They are a fit text to what can only be 
briefly told about a few out of the many who have 
appeared at different times and in different countries, 
chiefly in Asia, mo\'ing their fellows by their lofty 
teaching to live pure Hves in thought and deed. Such 
was their power over others, and so deep the reverence 
and love which they begat, that for hundreds of years 
millions of mankind have looked up to them as their 
saviours, and, in a few cases, have worshipped them as 
gods made "in the Hkeness of men." 

Among the chief of these were Gautama the Bud- 
dha in India; Confucius in China; Zoroaster in Persia; 
Jesus Christ in Syria; and Mohammed in Arabia. 
Their disciples treasured their sayings, which were 



1 86 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

handed on from one generation to another, and, 
in the course of time, written down, becoming the 
scriptures or sacred "^Titings of the great rehgions. 
So sacred are some of these books held to be that it 
was believed that they were the very words of God 
himseh. There lived other men. before and after those 
just named, such as the great lawgivers and prophets 
among the Jew^s, and the great philosophers among the 
Greeks and Romans and Chinese; and last, but not 
least, those of whom the high-souled Pharaoh Akhnaton 
is a tA^pe; numbering a host of saintly men and women 
who made it their life's aim to strive to banish e\il 
and to inspire others to noble endeavors. Their stor}", 
which is often one of self-sacrifice unto death for the 
good of others, should be read by everyone, especially 
by young people, for thereby the lesson is learned in 
early years that goodness is better than greatness, and 
of more abiding worth. To say tliis is not to underrate 
the value of deeds wrought by the heroes of every age 
and country who. in their hatred of tyranny, and of 
the cruelty and wrong which it brings, have fought and 
died for holy causes. Sometimes the freedom won for 
the body has made possible the freedom of the mhid; 
and the battle against oppression, which alone justifies 
war, has made easier the path of the great teachers. 



GREAT TEACHERS 187 

But it is one of the saddest things in this world's 
history that reHgion itself has often been a cause of 
war and bloodshed between those who could not agree 
whether tliis or that creed was true. And the more 
sad because we now know that they fought and per- 
secuted one another over things which neither of them 
could prove to be either true or false; even about 
tilings some of which we know are wholly false, and 
often, as we now see, too absurd to quarrel about. 
But, with the growth of knowledge, men have come to 
agreement that there can be no greater crime than to 
imprison or kill anyone because he cannot or will not 
believe what we beUeve. Knowledge has also brought 
home to us the fact that the religion we profess is due to 
the country in which we live. If we had been born in 
India, we should have been Hindoos or Mohammedans; 
if we had been born in Burmah or Tibet we should 
have been Buddhists, and if we had been born in 
Central Africa we should have been idol and fetish 
worshippers and something lower than these. 

Religion is the mind's complexion, 
Governed by birth, not self-election; 
And the great mass of us adore 
Just as our fathers did before. 



XXXIII 
SACRED BOOKS 

Ie this book has taught you nothing else, I hope you 
have learned from it that the different beHefs of man- 
kind are worthy of attention. Few of us will live here 
for more than sixty or seventy years; and when we take 
off the time needed for eating and working and sleeping, 
there is not so very much left wherein to learn a Httle 
about the world in which we dwell. We do wisely 
to use some spare moments in asking how other eyes 
have looked upon the beauty and the mystery around, 
and what it has said to their hearts. 

It is not so very long ago that good-meaning men 
looked upon the various religions of the heathen world, 
as it is called, as wholly the work of man, and if studied 
at aU, to be studied as proofs of his having been born 
in sin, and therefore full of hatred to whatever is good 
and true. But wiser and more thoughtful men felt 
that we ought to try and understand these rehgions 
and see what kind of answers others, besides our own, 
have given to the questions about God, how the mde 



SACRED BOOKS 189 

universe began, and about life and death, which we all 
ask. These answers may be feeble and dim, but since 
they are the best that could be had, they demand our 
s}Tnpathy. We do not make our own religion more 
true by calling other religions false, nor do we make it 
worth less to us by admitting the good that may be in 
them. And this is one of the lessons taught by even 
a slight knowledge of the sacred books of other faiths, 
some older than our own, and still beHeved in by 
hundreds of milHons of mankind, who look upon them 
as the word of God, and therefore, as dear to them as 
our Bible should be dear to us. In them are the pre- 
cepts which the}' have been taught to obey, the prayers 
and h}Tnns wliich have the full rich meaning age alone 
can give, and which have brought comfort to sorrowful 
hearts that no other scriptures could bring. It is true 
that all sacred books contain many fables, myths, 
legends, and coarse ideas about God; and from these 
the Bible and no other ancient books are free, because 
no other ideas were possible at the time when they were 
written; and the errors that they contain do not make 
less true whatever of truth they hold. It is a world- 
wide behef that words possess magic power over both 
gods and men, and this explains why sacred books 
and other writings are used as charms and fortune 



IQO THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

tellers. Verses from the Bible are copied out on slips 
and then one of these is chosen at random; or the 
Bible itself is opened and the verse which first catches 
the eye is taken as an omen of what should be done. 
To discover a thief, a key is hung from it and swung 
round, and when Psalm 50, v. 18 is read, it is beheved 
to turn to the culprit. On leaving the house, it is a 
Persian custom to recite a verse from the Koran, and 
then blow in the direction of the four points of the 
compass, to chase away the devil, And a story is told 
of a man in Africa who was thought to be very holy, 
and who earned his living by writing prayers on a 
board, washing them off, and selling the water. 

Any account which I give you of the different 
sacred writings would be chiefly a hst of very long 
names, and it is better that I should quote a few 
passages from them. 

I do not include the Bible, because you can read it 
for yourselves, or, at least, such portions of it as are 
suited for young people. For until boys and girls 
have reached their "teens," they should read only 
selected passages, of which, in their beauty and in- 
structiveness, there is enough and to spare. The 
reason of this is that the greater part of the Bible — 
mainly because it is an Eastern book — is very difficult 



SACRED BOOKS 191 

to understand, and needs to be explained in the light 
of the times when, and the places where, its various 
contents were written. It contains biographies and 
histories, all of which are full of myths and legends; 
poems, proverbs, letters, and so forth, each the work 
of different men, some of whom lived hundreds of 
years apart; and who therefore could have no knowl- 
edge that what they wrote would form part of one 
volume. The oldest writings date from a time when 
coarse and often revolting ideas prevailed about God, 
while the later date from a time when those ideas had 
given place to purer and nobler. But what each wrote 
is of highest value, for they were honest men and set 
down truthfully all that they heard and believed, 
wliile much that some of them wrote will never be 
surpassed in the beauty of its language and the loft- 
iness of its teaching. And it was a very happy event 
that the Bible was translated at a time when our 
English language had well nigh reached perfection in 
its simpHcity, charm, and power. Here are two gems 
that need no setting. 

"And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed 
unto him but a few days for the love he had to her." (Gene- 
sis xxix, 20.) 

"And when the child was grown, it fell on a day that he went 
out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, 



192 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE AVORLD 

*My head, my head.' And he said to a lad, ^ Carry him to his 
mother.' And when he had taken him, and brought him to his 
mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died." (2 
Kings, IV, 18-20.) 

But I fear that it is becoming now-a-days a neglected 
book. One reason of this is that people have given up 
the old and absurd beKef that every word of it, from 
Genesis to Revelation, was inspired by God himself, a 
belief held by other people about their sacred books, 
as, for example, the ancient Jews about the Old Tes- 
tament, and the Brahmans about the Vedas. To 
neglect the Bible for that reason is to remain ignorant 
of a large part of the world's history, and of writings 
some of which have a place among the immortal works 
of the human mind. 

And now to a few quotations from other Scriptures. 

I. From the Vedas, the sacred books of the Brah- 
mans, some of which are nearly four thousand years 
old. 

In the beginning there arose the source of golden light. 

He was the only born Lord of aU that is. 

He stablished the earth and this sky; who is the God to 
whom we shaU offer our sacrifice? 

He who gives Ufe, He who gives strength; whose blessing aU 
the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortahty; whose 
shadow is death. 

"\\'ho is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice? 



SACRED BOOKS 193 

He who through His power is the only King of the breathing 
and awakening world; He whose power these snowy mountains 
and the sea and distant river proclaim. 

He through whom the heaven was established — nay, the 
highest heaven; He who measured out the light in the air. . . 

Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay. Have 
mercy, Almighty, have mercy! 

Through want of strength, have I done wrong. Have mercy, 
Almighty, have mercy! 

Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the 
heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thought- 
lessness, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy! 

Purity of body comes by water; purity of mind by truthful- 
ness. The lamp of truth is a lamp of the wise. 

Commit no MTong, saying, "I am poor;" if you do, you will 
become poorer still. 

Let him not do evil to others who desires not that sorrows 
should pursue himself. 

2. From the Tripitaka; the sacred books of the 
Buddhists. Gautama the Buddha was born six hun- 
dred years before Christ. 

Conquer anger by mildness, evil by good, falsehood by truth. 

Be not desirous of discovering the faults of others, but zeal- 
ously guard against your own. 

He is a more noble warrior who subdues himself, than he who 
in battle conquers thousands. (Compare with this Proverbs 
XVI, 32.) 

To the virtuous all is pure. Therefore think not that going 
unclothed, fasting, or lying on the ground, can make the impure 
pure, for the mind will still remain the same. 

Reverence and humility, cheerfulness and gratitude, listening 



194 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

in due season to the Law — this is the highest ble^ing. Long- 
suffering, gentleness of si>eech, sight of godly men, conversation 
upon the Law in due season — ^this is the highest blessrug. He 
whose spirit is stirred not when he is touched by the stones of 
the worid, but abides unsorrowing, imdefiled and happy — thi*; is 
the highest blessing. 

To dwell in the neighbourhood of the good; to fear the remem- 
brance of good deeds; to have a soul fiUed with right desires; 
these are excellencies- To be pure, temperate, to persevere in 
good deeds; these are excellencies. 

Buddha said: A man who foolishly does me wrong, I wiU 
retur:! :: jiin. ny ungrudging love: the more evil comes from 
him, the more good shall go from me; the fragrance of these 
good deeds always redounding to me; the harm of the slandering 
words returning to him. 

The gem of the sky is the sun; the gem of the house is the 
child; in the assembly shines the brow of the wise man. 

3. From the Zend-Avesta, the ancient Persian Scripy- 
tures collected about three hundred j'ears before Christ. 

Purit>- is for man, next to life, the greatest good — ^that purity 
is procured by the law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own 
self with Good Thoughts. Words, and Dee Is. 

Thou shouldest not become presumptuous through am* happi- 
ness of the world, for the happiness of the world is such like as a 
cloud that comes on a rainy day. which one does not ward off 
by anj' hill. 

This I s-sk Thee. .Ahaaral tell me aright, that I may ponder 
these which are xhy revelations, O ilazdal and the words which 
were asked of Thee by Thy Good ]Mind within us, and that 
whereb}' we may attain, through Thine Order, to this hfe's 
perfection. Yea. hovr may my soul with jo>-fulness increase in 
goodness? 



SACRED BOOKS 195 

From a Hymn to the Sun. 

Thou, Maker of the Day, art most near to the lustre of God. 

Thou art a symbol of his grandeur, a beacon of his glory; 

Clothing the stars with the garment of thy splendour: 

I seek him whose shadow thou art 

The Lord that giveth harmony to worlds, 

Light of Lights! 

That he may illumine my soul with pure light. 

Here are a couple of sayings by two wise men of 
Persia. 

Hafiz (XlVth cent. A. D.): The object of all religions is 
alike. All men seek their beloved, and all the world is love's 
dwelling; why talk of a mosque or a church? 

Faizi (Xth cent. A. D.): Whoso would carelessly tread one 
worm that crawls on earth, that heartless one is darkly alienate 
from God, but he who embraceth all things with his love, to 
dwell with him God bursts all bounds, above, below. 

4. From the Koran, the Mohammedan Bible (com- 
piled about the Vllth century A. D.), and the Sayings 
of Mohammed: 

Lay not burdens on any but thyself. 

Be good to parents, and to kindred and to orphans, and to 
the poor, and to a neighbour, be he of your own people or a 
stranger, and to a fellow-traveller, and to the wayfarer, and to 
the slave. 

Which is the great name of God? 

Tell me his least name and I will return to thee his greatest. 
One day of his is equal to a thousand years of man's. O thou 
whose light manifests itself in the vesture of the world! thy 



196 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

names are manifest in the nature of man! thy knowledge shows 
itself in the science of thy prophets; thy bountj- is manifest in 
the bounty of great hearts. Recognize the mark of God in every 
place . . . the world is the image of God. . . . What! 
shall not man's heart repose in the thought of God? They who 
beheve and do the things that be right, blessedness awaiteth 
them. 

A man's true wealth is the good he has done in this world. 
\Mien he dies, mortals will ask what property has he left behind 
him, but angels will ask, what good deeds hast thou sent before 
thee? 

O my son. enjoin the right and forbid the wrong ... let 
thy pace be modest, and lower thy voice, for the least pleasing 
of voices is surety the voice of asses. 

Thou, O Lord, art one with Supreme Wisdom. . . . Thou 
art pure, eternal, and verj* great; Thou art smaller than the 
smallest, and greater than the greatest; fnknown, all-knowing, 
Thou art the true one. 

This world is not for >iim who doth not worship. Kjiow that 
the worship of spiritual wisdom is far better than the worship 
with offerings of things. There is not anj-thing to be compared 
with wisdom for purity. 

He whose heart is pure and good, who looks on ever\' creature 
as his friend and who loves ever}- soul as his own, who wishes 
to do good, and has abandoned vanity — ^in his heart dwells the 
Lord of hfe. 

5. On the walls of the old temples of Eg}-pt h\Triii3 
in honour of the gods were sometimes written, and 
this one to Aton, composed by Akhnaton. recalls like 
lansH-iage in the Book of Psalms. 

How manifold are all Thy works. . . . Thou didst create 



SACRED BOOKS 197 

the Earth according to Thy desire — men, all cattle, all that 
are upon the earth. . . . Thou makest the seasons. . . . 
Thou hast made the distant heaven in order to rise therein . . . 
dawning, shining afar off, and returning. The world is in Thy 
hand, even as Thou hast made them. When Thou hast risen 
they live; when thou settest they die. By Thee man liveth. 

Three thousand five hundred years before Christ a 
great teacher of morals lived in Egypt, and under the 
title of the Instructions of Ptah-Hotep there is pre- 
served wise counsel as to our duty one to another. 

Let thy face be bright what time thou livest. He that 
causeth strife cometh himself to sorrow. It is a man's kindly 
acts that are remembered of him in the years after his Ufe. 

Quarrelling in place of friendship is a foolish thing. 

Exalt not thy heart that it be not brought low. 

He that is just flourisheth; truth goeth in his footsteps, and he 
maketh habitations not in the dwellings of covetousness. 

Here are a few sayings from some famous men of 
old. From the Sayings of Confucius, the Chinese sage 
who lived in the fourth century before Christ. 

Some one asked him, Should injury be recompensed with 
kindness? The Sage answered, With what then will you recom- 
pense it? Recompense kindness with kindness, and injury with 
justice. Tsze-Kung asked him. Is there one word that may 
serve as a rule for one's whole life? Confucius answered, Is not 
Reciprocity such a word? What you do not wish done to your- 
self, do not to others. 

To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage. 

Shall I tell you what true knowledge is? When you know, 



198 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

to know that you know, and when you do not know, to know 
that you do not know. Pursue the study of virtue as though 
you could never reach your goal, and were afraid of losing the 
ground already gained. 

The real fault is to have faults and not try to amend them. 

Homer (1,000 B. C.?). 

He who hearkens to the voice of gods is heard by them. 
Kindness is the better part. 

When men respect each other, more are saved than slain. 
Blacker than the gates of hell is he who speaketh one thing 
with his Hps but hideth another in his heart. 

Hesiod (800 B. C.?). 

The man who wrongs another harms himself. 

Best is that man who thinketh on all things for himself, tak- 
ing heed to that which shall be better afterwards and in the end; 
and good, too, is he who hearkeneth to good advice; but whoso 
neither thinketh himself nor layeth to heart the words of an- 
other — he is a useless man. 

Work is no reproach: the reproach is idleness. 

Pindar (Vth Cent. B. C). 

The road of virtue is direct and leads to a good end. 
The days that follow are the truest witnesses and time be- 
friends the righteous. 

Socrates (IV th Cent. B. C.) quoting an old Greek 
proverb. 

Know Thyself. 



SACRED BOOKS 199 

Plato (IVth Cent. B. C.) makes Socrates speak thus: 

While I have Hfe and strength, I shall never cease from the 
practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom 
I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend, are 
you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money 
and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom 
and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you 
never heed or regard at all? And I shall repeat the same words 
to every one I meet, young and old. 

To him who has an eye to see, there can be no fairer sight 
than that of a man who combines moral beauty of soul with 
outward beauty of form. 

There can be none so fair. 

And you will grant that what is fairest is loveliest? 
.Undoubtedly that is. 

You should be to others what you think I should be to you. 

Heraclitus (about Vth Cent. B. C). 

Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have souls that 
understand not their language. 

Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which 
all things are steered through all things. 

You cannot step twice into the same rivers, for fresh waters 
are ever flomng in upon you. 

The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn 
aside each into a world of his own. 

One is ten thousand to me, if he be the best. 

Men pray to images, as if one were to talk with a man's 
house, knowing not what gods or heroes are. 

They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with 
blood, just as if one who had slipped into the mud were to wash 
his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing thus, would 
deem him mad. 



200 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Empedodes (about Vth Cent.- B. C). 

It is not possible for us to set God before our eyes, or to lay- 
hold of h im with, our hands. For he is not furnished with a 
human head on his body, two branches do not sprout from his 
shoulders, he has no feet, no swift knees, but he is only a sacred 
and unutterable mind flashing through the whole world with 
rapid thoughts. 

By Love do we see Love, and Hate by grievous Hate. If 
supported on thy steadfast mind, thou wilt contemplate these 
things with good intent and faultless care, then shalt thou have 
all these things in abundance, and thou shalt gain many others 
from them. For these things grow of themselves into thy heart, 
where is each man's true nature. 

Blessed is the man who has gained the riches of di\ine 
wisdom. 

Aristophanes (JXtk Cent. B. C). 

If to my words you give good heed 

Jkly counsel you abide, 

A goodly chest and clearest skin 

Are 3'ours and shoulders wide. 

Few words will he upon your tongue. 

But sound 3'ou'll be in limb and lung, 

Lucretius (Roman poet: ist Cent. B. C). 

Sweeter by far on Wisdom's rampired height 

To pace serene the porches of the hght, 

And thence look down — down on the purblind herd 

Seeking and never finding in the night 

The road to peace — the peace that aU might hold, 

But yet is missed by young men and by old, 

Lost in the strife for palaces and powers. 

The axes, and the lictors and the gold. 



SACRED BOOKS 201 

Cicero (a great Roman lawyer, ist Cent. B. C). 

My own conscience is of more importance to me than what 
men say. 

Nature ordains that a man should wish the good of every man, 
whoever he may be, and for this very reason — that he is a man. 

The worship of the gods is the best and the most chaste, the 
holiest and the most religious, when we reverence them ever 
with purity and perfect innocence both of thought and word. 

Seneca (a Roman citizen, born at Cordova, in Spain, 
ist Cent, after Christ). 

We must live as if we were living in the sight of all men; 
we must think as though some one could and can gaze into our 
inmost breast. 

Even from a comer it is possible to spring up into heaven; 
rise, therefore, and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God. 

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself. 

Would you please the gods? Then be like them. He wor- 
ships them enough who imitates them. (Plato said, "He who 
would be dear to God must be like Him, and such as He is.") 

So live with men as if God saw you; so speak with God as if 
men heard you. 

Epictetiis (a Greek freedman in Rome, ist Cent, after 
Christ). 

From your mind cast out sadness, fear, desire, envy, avarice, 
intemperance. But it is only possible to cast them out by look- 
ing to God, by devotion to His commands. If a man could 
worthily realize that we are all in a special sense the children 
of God, and that God is the Father of both men and gods, he 
would think nothing mean or vulgar about himself. 

At all times we ought to praise the greatness of God. For 



202 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

what else can I, a lame old man, do than sing hymns to God? 
If I were a nightingale, I should act as a nightingale, and if a 
swan, as a swan; but since I am a rational being, it behooves me 
to praise God, and I exhort you to join in the same song. 

What ought not to be done, do not even think of doing. 

When asked how a man could grieve his enemy, Epietetus 
answered. By preparing himself to act in the noblest way. 

Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor. 2nd Cent, after 
Christ). 

Does man's life offer anything higher than justice, truth, wis- 
dom and courage, in a word, than the understanding at peace 
with itself? 

Do not live as though you had a thousand years before you. 
The common due impends, while you Hve, and while you may, 
be good. Love your work, however humble, and find in it 
refreshment. In the morning, when you feel loth to rise, faU 
back upon the thought, I am rising for man's wgrk. Why make 
a grievance of setting about that for which I was born, and for 
sake of which I have been brought into the world? 

Be like the headland on which the billows dash themselves 
continually: but it stands fast, till about its base the boiling 
breakers are lulled to rest. 

As the horse that runs, the hound that hunts, the bee that 
hives its honey, so the man who does the kindness does not 
raise a shout, but passes on to the next act, as a vine to the 
bearing of clusters for next season. 

Men exist for one another. Teach them then, or bear with 
them. Not to do likewise is the best revenge. 

No mere talk of what the good man should be. Be it! 

Sallustius (IVth Cent, after Christ). 

Virtue in the region of Reason is Wisdom; in the region of 



SACRED BOOKS 203 

Fight is Courage; in the region of Desire it is Temperance; the 
virtue of the whole soul is Righteousness. 

From the Golden Verses of Hierocles (an Alexandrian 
Greek, who lived about the middle of the Vth 
Cent, after Christ). 

Let not soft sleep come upon thy eyelids till thou has pon- 
ered the deeds of the day: Wherein have I sinned? What 
work have I done? What left undone that I was bound to do? 

Beginning at the first, go through even unto the last; and 
then let thy heart smite thee for the evil deed, but rejoice in the 
good work. 

Ejiow as "far as is permitted thee, that Nature in all things 
is like unto herself, that thou mayest not hope that of which 
there is no hope, nor be ignorant of that which may be. 

But do thou be of good cheer, for they are God's kindred 
whom holy Nature leadeth onward, and in due order sheweth 
them all things. 

^ Perhaps more than enough has been quoted from 
these wise men of old (and much could be quoted from 
many others) '' pagans," as they are called; a name 
which once was a term of pity or reproach, but by 
which we now mean that they were not Christians. 
These brief sentences from their writings show that 
among civilized peoples there have never been lacking 
those who strove to lead others into ways of happiness 
and paths of peace and that, as counsel for the right 
conduct and best use of life, these maxims of the wise 



204 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE \\'ORLD 

who wrote thousands of years ago have never been 
excelled, and remain true for all time. 

But I must here make end. taking to heart what one 
of the earUest of the Roman poets says about over- 
much preaching — 

"A little moralizing's good — ^a little; 
I like a taste, but not a bath of it." 



XXXIV 
SUMMARY 

Man's brain has made him what he is as Worker, 
and, still more, as Thinker. 

In the course of ages that cannot be reckoned, he 
became more and more human, until he reached a 
stage when he was able to put questions and frame 
answers about his surroundings. BeHeving these to be 
moved as he was moved by what we call spirit, ever 
a thing of mystery to him as it is to us, he spoke of 
them as aHve, and hence all the myths about them 
which he invented describe them acting as he acted, 
only in a more powerful and terrifying way. All through 
his history we find fear of the unknown ruling his Hfe, 
and only as knowledge of things dispelled dread did 
fear give place to trust. 

In ignorance, born of fear, Ues the source of his 

attitude towards the crowd of spirits with which his 

imagination peopled heavens and earth. Regarding 

them as all-powerful to help or harm him, he devised 

various ways of getting into friendly relation with 

them, and above all with those on whom he believed 

205 



2o6 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

his food-supply to depend. Hence charms, spells, sacri- 
fices, and prayers and all other modes of what may 
be included under the word worship. And there is 
no dead or li\-ing thing, from stars to spiders, which 
the bewildered mind of man has not at one time or 
place and another, made an object of worship. 

Perhaps most widespread of all. is his worship of the 
departed. Death is not to the savage a natural event, 
and his behef that the dead Hve on was quickened by his 
dreams in which they appeared, and which to him are 
real events. Hence, ever^-where, the framing of notions 
of a spirit-filled world, and of what goes on therein. 

Although a belief in good and e\-il spirits, in min- 
istering angels and demons survives among the higher 
races, this has taken a second place wherever man's 
ideas about the great gods have advanced. -\nd this 
advance has been in the degree that he has risen from 
the animal to the highest human, and to the percep- 
tion that goodness is better than greatness. Thus in 
reading the sacred books of the various rehgions. we 
may trace man's progress from behef in gods who 
revel in the blood of human and animal sacrifices to 
an -\ll-merciful Being whom men ser\-e best in doing 
justly and in rendering service to others less happily 
placed than themselves. 



PART III 

MAN THE DISCOVERER AND INVENTOR 



XXXV 

MODERN SCIENCE 

It was at Miletus, in Ionia, on the Coast of Asia 
!Minor, that, five hundred years before Christ, science 
and the freedom to say what we think were born. 
That city was the abode of a small group of philos- 
ophers (''lovers of wisdom," as that word means) who 
were not content to accept without question the old 
tales and myths about the beginnings of things which 
they had been told. For the Greeks, Hke all other 
civilized peoples, had passed through savage and 
barbaric stages, and preserved traces of these in their 
behefs, manners and customs. So these wise men 
started on the quest after the causes of things, whence 
they began, and how they came to be w^hat they are. 
They grasped the idea that the cosmos (Greek, mean- 
ing order J and appHed to the universe) was derived 
from a single substance. One said that this was 
water; another, fire; others, vapour, mind, and so on. 
These were guesses, for such they could only be in 
that far away time, but they put others on the path of 

enquiry which led to certainties. 

209 



2IO THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

The influence of these lonians, some of whom 
sujffered persecution and death for their opinions (Lat. 
opinor, to think), upon all after ages has never waned, 
although many centuries passed before its results were 
reached. How progress was stopped for well nigh a 
thousand years in Europe is a story too long to be 
told here, and a few words must suffice to speak of the 
chief cause of arrest. Between three and four hundred 
years after the birth of Christ the reHgion which bears 
his name had spread over a large part of the Roman 
Empire, and the Bishop of Rome, who for fourteen 
hundred years has been called the Pope, from Pappas, 
meaning Father, had gained so much power that as 
that Empire fell into decay, he became by degrees a 
sort of Pope-King, ruling both the bodies and souls of 
men. "The Papacy," said an old writer, "is no other 
than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting 
crowned upon the grave thereof." The Roman Cath- 
oHc Church, of which the Pope is head, set up a claim 
to have been founded by Jesus Christ, and hence 
that whatever it taught not only about rehgion, but 
about the heavens and the earth and everything else, 
must be accepted as true. Those who dared to deny 
this were called heretics and were imprisoned, or put to 
cruel death, and threatened with the torments of hell 



MODERN SCIENCE 21 1 

to be suffered by them for ever and ever. One of them, 
named Bruno, was burnt at Rome in 1600 for saying 
that the earth travels round the sun. Yet the priests 
who did these dreadful things were not so much cruel as 
misguided. They caused heretics to be put to death 
to prevent them from leading others astray to the 
peril of their souls; this they honestly believed. So it 
came to pass that persecution, even between the various 
sects of Christians, went on for centuries. 

It is only during the last three hundred years that 
the path to freedom of enquiry has been opened, never 
to be closed again. Now-a-days we may say aloud what 
we think, and, so long as no one is thereby harmed, act 
upon it. But even that freedom has been won only 
within the last few years and it is far from being 
universal. There are still numbers of timid and igno- 
rant people who will tell you that it is wrong to doubt 
this or that thing, and who, when they hear anyone 
called a "free-thinker," look on him as one to be 
shunned. Give no heed to the talk of these foolish men 
and women; could such have their way, the world would 
never progress. You for whom this book is written are 
old enough to try to find out things for yourselves and 
not to beheve what you are told as true simply because 
people say that it is so. But you must keep your 



212 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

ears open to those who have been at great labour to 
find out the facts about things b}- testing and pro^-ing 
them, since only a few of us have time or skill to do 
this. Such are those who have made the sun and 
stars, the rocks of the earth, and h\Tng thingSj the 
study of nany years, and who are agreed in what 
they tell us. These learned men we may wholly trust. 

This does not apply to matters which we are told 
to believe, but which cannot be tested or proved, such 
as the creeds of different reUgions. and what each of 
these tells us about the spirit world. It is over these, 
concerning which no man can be certain, that quarrels 
and persecutions have risen, and it is about these that 
we must all maintain, as our most sacred right, freedom 
to think. 

To keep in mind the difference between things con- 
cemins: which knowledge is to be had and thino^s which 
must remain matters of faith, will save us all the 
pain and loss of time in unlearning what we might 
otherwise accept as truth, but which may turn out to 
be error. 

You will learn from what is said above that although 
the impulse to questions about the Universe, as we 
call it (from Latin words meaning *'*' turned into one") 



MODERN SCIENCE 213 

came from Ionia twenty-four centuries ago, what we 
really know about it has been found out within the 
last three centuries; and most of this within only the 
last sixty years. 

We must keep in mind the difference between what 
is discovered and what is invented. To discover is to 
uncover or find anything for the first time, as, for 
example, that the sun is a globe, or that New Zealand 
is an island. To invent is to design and make some- 
thing that did not exist before, as, for example, steam- 
engines and sewing machines. Some discoveries, as 
that of the sun's distance from the earth, enlarge our 
knowledge by adding only to the treasures of the mind; 
others, like the discovery of America, are of the deepest 
importance to human progress in material things. 
Some inventions, as of toys, add only to amusement, 
while others, like that of machinery, are of immense 
value in adding to the stock of comfort and wealth. 
But without discovery there can be no invention: if 
the power of steam had not been found out, there 
would have been no trains or steamships. And all 
advance has been not only by slow stages, but by 
making use of what has gone before. 

Putting into as few words as I can what, thus far, 
is known about the Universe; it is made up of Matter 



214 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

and Motion, each of which can never be destroyed, 
while each is always undergoing change. Matter 
exists in different but always connected states; it is 
either solid or liquid; gaseous or — what is the most 
wonderful and, as yet, most mysterious of all — ethereal. 
In an ethereal state matter is everywhere present, fill- 
ing the vacant spaces between all bodies, and also the 
spaces between the particles of which all bodies are 
composed; and it transmits every kind of force. But it 
has never been seen nor handled nor measured. 

Motion acts in a twofold way, i, pushing or drawing 
together the particles of things, and also all bodies; 
and 2, pulling or drawmg them asunder. 

We know nothing about the beginnings of things; 
nothing as to whence they are or why they are. We 
can only guess as to what they are or what they have 
become, by obser\dng what they do. For example, by 
examining the nature and watching the movements 
of the various heavenly bodies, astronomers and 
chemists are agreed that they were formed from 
nebulous or cloud-like masses of matter. Such was the 
beginning of our sun and his system of planets, moons, 
comets, and meteors or shooting-stars. He is a star, 
but not the largest or the most brilHant of the stars 
scattered in milKons throughout space, most of them 



MODERN SCIENCE 215 

at so vast a distance from us that their light, travelling 
at the speed of nearly twelve millions of miles a minute, 
takes years to reach us. That from Alpha Centauri, 
the nearest, takes three and a half years; 'that from 
Sirius, the brightest, takes twelve years. And as the 
sun and other stars are made of the same matter, and 
are ruled by the same laws, there being no chance or 
disorder anywhere, the story of his origin and that of 
all the smaller bodies of the stellar systems is to be 
taken as true of everything in the universe. Not that 
they are all ahke, for "one star differeth from another 
star in glory," some being old, others middle-aged, and 
others new. But these differences do not concern us 
here, and to explain them in detail would only confuse 
what I want to keep clear. 

Untold millions of years ago, the matter of which 
the solar system is composed existed in the form of a 
nebula spread over an enormous space. Its particles 
were drawn slowly together by the mysterious force 
called gravitation which binds all things together, and 
as they struck against one another the movements 
of the whole nebula were quickened; it spun round 
and round and became broken up into knot-Hke white- 
hot masses. The biggest of these was at the centre 
and became the sun, while from the others, shot-off or 



2i6 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

squeezed-out, as it may be said, from him, were formed 
the planets which, in their turn, shot-off smaller masses, 
becoming moons. The comets and meteors were ex- 
pelled with such enormous force and in such directions, 
that they have remained outcast bodies ever since ; 
but revolving in fixed orbits. As for the planets which 
are much larger than the Earth — Jupiter, Saturn, 
Uranus and Neptune — these are still very hot, shining 
by their own light, and if they should cool down to a 
state making life possible, their vast distance from the 
sun would prevent their getting enough of his light 
and heat to maintain it. As for the smaller planets. 
Mercury and Venus, they are so grilled by him that 
only such creatures as the fabled salamander, which 
was said to be a human-Hke animal, Hving always in 
fire, could exist in them. We know nothing as to what 
goes on in Mars; but if there are any plants and an- 
imals there, they are wholly unHke any that are known 
on the Earth. 

As one of the smaller planets, the Earth became cool 
enough millions of years ago to form a solid rind or 
crust, some of the rocks of which are fire-fused and 
the others water-laid. As the cooHng went on, some of 
the vapour in which the Earth was swathed condensed 
into the marvellous and complex fluid called water, 



MODERN SCIENCE 217 

which, filling the cracks and hollows of the crust, 
formed seas and oceans. Other vapours or gases 
formed the air which Mother Earth gives us as ''the 
breath of life." How and when Hfe itself began we do 
not know; that is one of the many secrets about which 
all sorts of guesses have been, and are still, made. 
But we know that the first life-forms had their begin- 
ning in water and that they were very simple in struc- 
ture and soft-bodied; hence no traces of them would be 
left. Plants appeared before animals, because they 
alone live and grow by feeding on what we call dead 
matter. Thus the Earth is the universal ''Mother," 

"For all men live from birth 

On what the horny hand wrings out 

From udders of the Earth." 

When we reach the rocks in which the fossil remains, 
as they are called (from Lat. fossilis, "dug out"), of 
plants and animals are found, their advance in struc- 
ture is proven. The lowest kinds are imbedded in the 
deeper and older rocks, and the highest in the upper- 
most and newer rocks. The Table following will make 
this clear: at the bottom is a humble seaweed; at the 
top is Man the Worker, Thinker and Discoverer. 

All Hfe on the earth depends on the sun, and this 
has set men of science calculating how long he will 






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Cave-dwelling Man. 



Mastodon. 



1. Univalve. 

2. Conifer. 

1. Nummulite. 

2. Univalve. 

1. Pearl Mussel. 

2. Ammonite, new form. 

3. Bivalve. 

4. Ammonite, new form. 

1. Bivalve. 

2. Bivalve. 

3. Cycad. 

4. Univalve. 

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2. Ammonite. 

3. Sea-lilj-. 

4- Footprints of Lahyrinthodon. (Amphibian). 

1. Bivalve. 

2. Lampshell. 

3. Ganoid. 

1. Precursors of Amphibian. 

2. Club-moss. 

3- Horsetail Plants. 

Ganoid Fish. 



I 2, 3. Lampshells. 
4. Trilobite. 



Seaweed. 





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MODERN SCIENCE 221 

I have said that the sun and planets and all the 
stars are made of the same stuff, and the way by which 
this was discovered is Uke a romance, except that, un- 
like romances, it is every word true. The instrument 
that tells the story is named the spectroscope. 

The lovely colours of the rainbow are due to the 
sunbeams, as they strike the raindrops, becoming 
"refracted," that is, broken up into a ribbon-Hke ray 
of colours from red to violet. The same effect appears 
when the beam falls on a dewdrop, or on a prism of 
glass or crystal. Beyond the red rays there are heat 
rays which are felt, but not seen, and beyond the 
violet rays there are chemical rays, also unseen, by 
means of which photographs are taken. All these 
rays, both seen and unseen, make up what is called a 
''spectrum" (Lat. spectrum^ "an appearance.") More 
than a century ago this spectrum, when looked into 
closely, was found to be crossed by hundreds of dark 
lines (since increased to thousands), the positions of 
which were carefully measured. But some years passed 
before their meaning was discovered. 

When we sing a note near a piano, it gives back the 
same sound, which, so to speak, it has absorbed. And 
when an element from the sun's hot interior passes 
through his vaporous atmosphere, a dark Hne appears. 



22 2 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

because the atmosphere has absorbed the element. 
Light thus answers to hght, as sound answers to sound: 
both are due to wave-Hke motion; sound to air- waves, 
and Hght to ether-waves. The hnes are not really 
dark, but appear so only because they are overpowered 
by the brightness of their surroundings. It was al- 
ready known that when sodium, hydrogen, and other 
elementary substances are made white hot, they show 
coloured Hnes whose position never changes, and that 
when they are heated to a gaseous or vaporous state 
those lines appear black. So the next step was to put 
them in such a position with the lines in the sun's 
spectrum that they could be compared, and the result 
was to show that they fitted in, one above the other, 
exactly. Hence is proved the existence of sodium, 
hydrogen, magnesium, iron (which has nearly five 
hundred lines), copper and other elements in a gaseous 
state in the sun's atmosphere. And with such differ- 
ences as, from their spectra, we know exist between 
them, it is the same with the stars: they and the sun, 
broadly speaking, are made of like matter, while so 
delicate are the instruments which astronomers have 
invented that they are able to tell by the slight shifting 
of the lines in the spectra of stars v/hether these far- 
distant bodies are coming nearer, or travelling away 



MODERN SCIENCE 223 

from, the Earth. Then, by putting what is called a 
dry plate in the telescope so that the two revolve 
together, and leaving it there for some hours, the 
images of numberless stars that the eye cannot see 
are photographed on the plate. 

Wonderful too, as '' seeing the invisible," is the 
discovery of certain rays produced by electrical currents 
sent through vacuum tubes by which our bones can 
be seen through the flesh. And if a bullet or needle 
be lodged in the body, these X rays, as they are named, 
will show where they are, so that the surgeon can ex- 
tract them. Then there are the wonders of the tele- 
graph. Electric batteries and wires are used to carry 
messages round the world in a few seconds; while still 
more wonderful, is telegraphing without wires; the space- 
filling ether, which is moved in all directions by electric 
waves, taking the place of the wires. In speaking 
through the telephone our voice does not travel, but 
is reproduced by means of a disc in motion at one end, 
the electric current setting up the same vibrations on a 
disc at the other end. In the still more marvellous 
phonograph we speak into a tube closed in with a thin 
metal disc to which is attached a steel point moving 
backwards and forwards, and making, as we talk or 
sing into the instrument, a number of small marks on 



224 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

a cylinder of hard wax which turns and travels so 
tha: the marks can never be entangled one with an- 
other. When the cylinder is put back to its starting 
j>oint, whatever was said :r sung is reproduced, as we 
saw in the example of the piano returning the note 
sung by anyone near iL And as the cylinders last 
many years, the voices of people long dead are thiis 
mar\-ellously reproduced by the gramophone. The 
"li\'ing pictures" shown by the cinematograph are 
obtained by taking the photographs at so rapid a rate 
ever\' second as to secure tiie ezec: c: real life and real 
motion. 

But to tell of all that man has discovered and in- 
vented would fill a big book, and I can nnd room for 
only another example which is too striking to be left 
out. 

Although it 15 more than a hundred years since steam 
power was brought into iise to propel ships and car- 
riages, it is interesting to note that until then no prog- 
ress in the means of getting from one place to another 
had been made since the immensely far-off times when 
man yoked the oxen and rode or drove the horse. So 
novel was the idea of railroads and steamers, that only 
ninet\' years ago, dever j>eople laughed at it, and re- 
fused **to trust themselves to such machines going at 



MODERN SCIENCE 225 

such a rate." Whereby hangs the lesson not to rashly 
pronounce judgments upon what is new. As for aero- 
planes and water planes, these may one day be made 
so perfect that people may travel through the air 
without risk. 

The story of discovery of the oneness of living things; 
of man's place among animals; of his great age on the 
earth; and of the ways in which the higher races of 
mankind advanced from savage to civilized stages; 
has been told in the earlier chapters of this little book. 
These discoveries are for each one of us the most im- 
portant that have ever been made, because they bear 
upon all the thoughts and acts whereby our life is 
shaped for good or evil. 



xxxm: 

coxclusiox 

1 HOPE that you wiJl learn from the foregoing that 
the facts of science are nor. as some think, dr)-, lifeless 
things. The} are -i^rhig things, filling with sweetest 
poetry the ear :Jia: listezis to them, and with fadeless 
harmony of colours the eye that looks upon the:n. 

They not only gi\ e us these higher pleasures which 
endure, but they bring daily bread and health and 
comfort to thousands, vrho but for knowledge of them 
would have Kved pitiful lives. 

I am o^ering you good counsel in ai^hsinr }":'U to 
use a certain pwDrtion of 3'our time in stuaying one 
branch of science. It matters not which j^ou choose 
so far as wonder, beauty, and truth are concerned, for 
astronomy, chemistry^, geology, plant and animal life, 
alike possess these in such abimdance that the years 
will be too short to exhaust them. 

With the mind thus stored, many an hour, otherwise 

dull, will be •"'nlled with music;"' many a star-Ut night, 

otherwise unheeded, will shine with familiar Kghts; 

226 



CONCLUSION 227 

many a landscape, bald and ugly to the unseeing eye, 
marked with Hnes of beauty hitherto invisible. And 
if, as I think this story shows, man's progress largely 
depends upon himself, how careful should we be to do 
nothing that will be a hindrance. Our knowledge is no 
blessing to us, unless we have learned to use it well 
and wisely, and learned too that, with it only, Hfe 
is not complete. 

But all this was said hundreds of years ago in lan- 
guage whose truth and beauty I have no power to 
approach : 

Receive my instruction and not silver, and knowledge 
rather than choice gold. proverbs, viii, lo. 
Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that 

GETTETH UNDERSTANDING. Ill, I3. 

She is more precious than rubies, and all the things 

THOU canst desire ARE NOT TO BE COMPARED UNTO HER. Ill, 
15- 

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths 

ARE PEACE. Ill, 17. 



SELECTED BOOKS OX THE SUBJECTS TREATED IX 

THIS WORE.' 

Chapters n -a:nt) rn 

Anthropology. Sir E. B. Tylor (!MacinilIaii. 7/6). 

Ancient Types of Man. Dr. A. Keith (Harpers, 2/6). 

Descent of Man. C. Dar"^tn' (^Murray, 2 6} . 

Man's Pldce in Nature. Prop. Huxley (MacniLllan, i). 

Man and His Forerunners. Dr. Buttel-Reepex (Longmans, 

2/6). 
Prehistoric Man. Dr. Duckworth (Cambridge L'niversity 

Press. I ). 
Story of Primitive Man. Edward Clodd (Hodder and Stough- 



ton, i/). 



Chapter j\' 



Man, Past and Present. Proe. A. H. Ke-Axx (Cambridge Uni- 
versity Press, 76). 

Wanderings of Peoples. Dr. A. C. H\ddox (Cambridge Uni- 
versity Press, I,). 

Ch.\pters v-mh 

Anthropology. Ser E. B. Tylor. 
Ancient Hunters. Proe. Sollas (MacmiUan, 12 f). 
Early Man in Britain. Prof. Boyt) Da\\-etxs (out of print). 
Man before Metals. X'. Joly CKegan Paul & Co., 5/). 
Origin of Civilization. Lord Avebury (Longmans, 7 '6). 
Prehistoric Times. Lord Axtbl-ry (Williams & X'orgate, 10/6) 
Rough Stone Monuments. T. E. Peet (Harpers, 2/6). 

22^ 



SELECTED BOOKS 229 

Chapter ix 

Human Speech. X. C. Macnamara (Kegan Paul & Co., 5/). 
Outlines of English Accidence, Dr. Morris (Macmillan, 6/)l. 
Romance of Words. E. Weekley (Murray, 3/6). 
Study of Words. Abp. Trench (Routledge, 2/6). 

Chapter x 

Early History of Mankind. Chapter 5, Sir E. B. Tylor (Mur- 
ray, 12/). 

Origin of Civilization. Chapter 2, Lord Avebury. 

Story of the Alphabet. Edward Clodd (Hodder & Stough- 
ton, i/). 

Chapters xi and xn 

Adonis, Attis, Osiris. J. G. Frazer (Macmillan, 10/). 
Anthropology. Sir E. B. Tylor. 

Ancient Art atui Ritual. Jane E. Harrison (Williams & Nor- 
gate, i/). 

Chapters x\T[i-xxn 

Animism. Edward Clodd (Constable, i/). 

Childhood of Religions. Chapter 2 on Creation Legends. Ed- 
ward Clodd (Kegan Paul, 1/6). 

Myths and Dreams. Edward Clodd (Chatto & Windus, 3/6). 

Primitive Culture. Sir E. B. Tylor, 2 vols., (Murray, 21/). 

Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals. Prof. Davenport (The 
Macmillan Co., 6/6). 

Chapter xxni 

Asiatic Studies. Sir A. C. Lyall, 2 vols. (Murray, 10/). 
Orpheus, a General History of Religions. S. Reinach (Heine- 

mann, 8/6). 
Origins of Religion. Andrew Lang (Watts & Co., i/). 



230 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

Cbl\pter XXI\' 

Greek Dmnation. W. R. H.AJ.LrDAY (^Macmillan, 5/). 
Magic and Fetichism. A. C. Haddox (^ConstablCj if). 

Ch-\pter xxm: 

Magic, Divination and Demonology. Dr. Witton Da\t:5 (James 

Clarke & Co.. 3/6). 
Primitive Culture. Chapter iS. 

Semitic Magic. R. C. THOiiPSON (Luzac &: Co.. 10 6). 
Tom Tit Tot. Edward Clodd (Duckworth & Co.. out of print). 

(Xame superstitions.) 

Chapter xx\ti 

Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Prof. J. G. Frazer (Macmillan. 10). 

Animism. Edward Clodd. 

Belief in Immortality. Prop. J. G. Frazer (Macmillan, 10/). 

Belief in Personal Immortality. E. S. P. Haynes (Watts, if). 

Primitive Culture. Sir E. B. Tylor. 

Primitive Superstitions. R. ^I. Dormax (Lippincott & Co.) 

Religions of Primitive Peoples. Dr. D. G. Brentox (Putnams) 
(On tree and allied forms of nature-worship Dr. Frazer's 
great work The Golden Bough is an indispensable book). 

Chlapters xx\tq-xxx 

Evolution of Religion. L. R. Farjnell (Williams & Xorgate. 5/). 

Primitive Culture. Chapters 16, 17. 

Threshold of Religion. R. R. !NLarett (INIethuen, 3/6). 

Ch-Apter xxxn 

Asia and Europe. Chapter on '"The Great Arabian.'' Meredith 
Tov.Tisend. (Constable, 12 6). 



SELECTED BOOKS 231 

Buddhism. Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids (Socy. for Promoting 

Christian Knowledge, 2/6). 
Hinduism. L. D. Barnett (Constable, i/). 
Islam. Ameer Ali Syed (Constable, i/). 
Jesus of Nazareth. Edward Clodd (Kegan Paul, 1/6). Watts 

& Co. (cheap reprint i/). 
Myth, Magic and Morals. F. C. Conybeare (Watts & Co., 6/). 

Chapters xxxiii-xxxiv 

Passages from the Bible. J. G. Frazer (A. & C. Black, 3/6). 
The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep. i/. Wisdom of the East Series 

(John IMurray). 
The Sayings of Confucius. 2/. Wisdom of the East Series 

(John jNlurray). 
The Teachings of Zoroaster. 2/. Wisdom of the East Series 

(John Murray). 
Buddhist Scriptures; a Selection. 2/. Wisdom of the East Series 

(John Murray). 

Chapter xxxv 

Class Book of Geology. Sir A. Geikie (Macmillan, 5/). 
Growth of a Planet. E. S. Grew (Methuen, 6/). 
Astronomy of To-day. C. G. Dolmage (Seeley & Co., 5/). 
History of Freedom of Thought. Prof. J. B. Bury. (Williams 

& Norgate, i/). 
Holy Christian Church. R. M. Johnston (Constable, 5/6). 
Pioneers of Evolution. Edward Clodd (Watts, i/, cheap 

reprint). 
Rise and Progress of Rationalism in Europe. W. E. H. Lecky 

(Longmans, 2/6). 
Short History of Free Thought. J. ]\L Robertson, 2 vols. 

(Watts, 12/). 
The Elements. Sir W. A. Tilden (Harpers, 2/6). 



232 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD 

The Wonderful Century. A. R. Wallace (Swan, Sonneschein 

& Co., 6/). 
Warfare of Science and Theology. A. D. White, 2 vols. (Mac- 

millan, 21/). 



INDEX 



Abraham, 59, 181-184 
Acts of the Apostles, 166 
Age, New Stone, 23, 43, 49, 50, 
52, 112 

of Bronze, 48, 51, 52 

of Iron, 51 

of Metals, 23, 46 

Old Stone, 7, 23, 39, 41, 43, 

49, 52 . 
Agni, 129 

Akhnaton, 179, 186, 196 
Alphabet, 66 
Alpha Centauri, 215 
America, 16, 17, 23, 121, 213 
American races, 25 
Ancestor, common, of Man and 

Apes, 13 
Ancestor- worship, 166 
Angels, 137 
Animals, domestication of, 54 

punishment of, as criminals, 
140 

worship of, 137 
Ant, social, 28 

worker, 4 
Anthropomorphism, 171, 172 
Ape-like skulls, 16 



Apes and men, 11, 21 
Arabic, 64 
Aristophanes, 200 
Arrowheads, 43, 112, 125 
Art, primitive, 36-38 
Articulate speech, 60, 90 
Aryan, 64 
Astrology, 136 
Athos, Mt., 151 
Aton, 13s, 179, 196 
Australian natives, 26, 66 
Axes, Stone, 44 

B 

Baptism, 125 
Barter, 59 
Bee, 28 

Beltane fire, 130 
Bible, 190 

a magical use of, 190 
Blackfeet Indians, 134 
Blood of Man, of Apes and of 

Monkeys, 13 
Body, burial of, 169 
Borneo, 11 
Brain of Man, 95 
Breath, 160 
Bridget, 50, 129 



233 



234 



INDEX 



Britain, Early Man in, 7 

map of in Old Stone Age, 8 
British Isles once a part of 

Europe, 17 
Brixham Cavern, 18 
Bronze, Age of, 48 
Bruno, 211 

Burial places sacred, 166 
Bushmen, 31, 66 



CannibaHsm, 26, 27 

Cat's cradle, 76 

Cattle as wealth, 59 

Caucasian, 24 

Causes of decay of Empires, 86 

Cave-bear, 41 

Caverns, limestone, 17 

as burial-places, 42 

as dwellings, 31 
Cells, II 

brain, 96 
Charms, 146 
Chimpanzee, 4, 11, 23 
Chinamen, 24 

Christian decree against wor- 
ship of stones, etc., 127 
Christmas Day, 135 
Cicero, 201 
Cinematograph, 222 
Climate,. 20 
Comets, 216 
Compass, 56 
Confucius, 185, 197 



Cooking, 30 
Copper, 48 
Counting, 73 
Cricket, 76 
Custom, 100 
Cybele, 127 



D 



Dances, snake, 139 

Dancing, 78, 123, 157 

David, King, 79, 80 

Days, 132 

Death, 206 

Decay of people, 85 

Demons, 175, 206 

Descent, common of Man and 

Apes, 14 
Devil, 175 
Diana, 127 

Dictionary, value of, 61 
Discovery, 213 
Diseases, 162 
Divination, 149 
Domestic animals, 54 
Drama, 81 
Dreams, 161, 206 
Drift, 41 
Drum, 77 
Dualism, 173 

E 

Earth, formation of the, 216 

rocks of the, 217 
Earth, myths about the, 109 



INDEX 



23s 



Earth- worship, 121 

Earth, Mother, 103, no, 127. 

132, 140, 144, 217 
Eating an Enemy, 27 
Echo, 98, 109, 161 
Eclipse, myths, 115 
Egyptian sun-god, 135 
Electric waves, 221 
Elements, 218 
Empedocles, 200 
Empires, decay of, 85 
EoHths, 52 
Epictetus, 201 
Eskimos, 31 
Ethereal matter, 214 
Exodus, Book of, 80, 140 



Faizi, 195 

Falling stars, 137 

Fate ruled by the stars, 118, 136 

Fear of the unknown, 106, 150, 

164 
Fetish-worship, 153 
Fire, 22 

as a charm, 130 
making, 29 
w^orship, i28ff. • 
Flint tools and weapons, 15, 18, 
40, 41, 43» 44 
flakes, 40 
Food, 26 

dancing to secure, 80 
quest of, 99 



Fortune-telling, 136 

Fossils, 217 

Foundation-sacrifices, 123 
Freedom to think, 209, 211 
Future life, 164 



Games, 75 

Gautama (Buddha), 185, 193 

Genesis, Book of, 59, 76, 129, 

144, 172, 191 
Geometry, 74 
Gesture-language, 62 
Ghosts, 163 
Gibbon, n, 23 
God, name of, 151 
Gods, dancing before the, 79 

nature, 170 
Gold, 47 
Gorilla, n, 23 
Gramophone, 222 
Greek, 64 

heaven and earth myth, no 

philosopher, 209 

prayer, 159 

snake-worship, 139 

H 

Hafiz, 19s 

Hair as test of race, 24 

Harp, 77, 78 
Harvest-custom, 122 
Hearth-fire sacred, 128 



mr^-- 



J 



ID 



^^iiffisir, m 



.li.::!^ 



jESl. 



irt_ 






Sipgs^ Book og, 192 
13 






32 



I 



B^ .5^ -fl^Bs S^ 



- •■ «• - 



M 






INDEX 



237 



Mammals, 11 

Mammoth, 18, 19, 22, 36, 41, 50 
Man-worship, 145, 152 
!Man and apes, 11, 21 

antiquity of, 20, 52 

as flesh-feeder, 22, 26 

as plant-feeder, 22, 26 

brain of, 95 

origin of name, 96 

primitive home of, 16, 20 

skulls of primitive, 15, 16 

wanderings of, 23 

worship of, 145 
!Marcus Aurelius, 202 
Matter, 214 
May-Day, 123, 143 
Measuring, 74 
Medicine-man, 146 
^Mediterranean, 17 
Metals, 23, 46 
!Miletus, 209 
!Milk, sacred, 140 
!Mind and brain, 95 
Mississippi, 20 
Mithra, 135 
^Mohammed, 179, 185 
Mohammedans, 126, 177 
Monex, 59 
[Mongolian, 24 
Monkeys, 13 
Monotheism, 176 
Moon changes, 132, 134 
Moon myths, 113 

worship, 133 



[Morals, 100 

IMoravia, 23 

Mosaic books, 62 

Motion, 214 

Mountain-w^orship, 128 

Muses, 62 

Myths: Chapters XIX-XXII 

N 

Name, magic in, 147 
Nature, 103 

worship of, i2orf. 
Nebula, 214, 215 
Need-fire, 130 
Negro, 24, 25 
Nerve-cells, 96 
New Stone Age, 23, 43, 49, 50, 

52, 112 
Nomad, 54 
Nuns as sacred fire-keepers, 129 

O 

Odin, 128 

Old Stone Age, 7, 23, 39, 41, 43, 

49, 52 
Old Testament, 63, 172 
Orang-utan, 11, 23 
Ornaments, savage, 47 



Pantheon, 171 
Pantomime, 62 
Papyrus, 49 



238 



INDEX 



Parsees, 6;^ 

Peruvians, 125 

Phonograph, 221 

Piano, 77 

Picture-writings, 66&. 

Pictures, prehistoric, 15, 35ff. 

Piltdown skull, 16 

Pindor, 198 

Planets, 119, 132, 216 

Plato, 199 

Pleiades, 118 

Plough, 55 

Polynesians, 176 

Polytheism, 170 

Pope, the, 210 

Pottery, 30 

Prayer, 157 

Prehistoric time, 7 

Primitive guessing, 97 

Printing, 71 

Ptah-Hotep, 197 

R 

Radium, 218 
Rain-charm, 80 
Rainbow, 219 
Rattlesnake, 139 
Reindeer, 50 
Rehcs, 167 

Religion, origin of, 99 
Rehgious wars, 187 
River, Sacred, 125 
Rocks, thickness of, 16 
table of , 2 1 7 



Roman Catholics, 166, 210 
Rome, snake-worship in, 139 



Sacred books, 6^, i88£f. 
Sacrifices, 122^ 125, 134, 156, 

163, 206 
Sailor, 56 
Sallustius, 202 
Samuel, Book of, 79, 80 
Sanskrit, 63 
St. Paul, 166 
Satan, 175 
Savages, 6 

skill of, 53 

confused ideas of, 97 
Sea-gods, 125 
Seneca, 201 
Serpent-worship, 138 
Seville, 79 
Shelter, 31 
Shepherds, 54 
Silver, 48 
Ship, 56 

Shooting-stars, 126, 137, 216 
Signs, writing, 71 
Sirius, 215 
Skeletons of Man and Apes, 12 

of Man, 15 
Skulls of primitive man, 15, 16 ' 
Snake-worship, 138 
Sneezing, 161 
Socrates, 198 
Solomon, Proverbs of, 159, 225 



INDEX 



239 



Song, 76 
Soul, 160 

catching, 162 
Sounds, words from, 61 ^ 

Spectroscope, 219 
Spirits, belief in, 104 
Stages of culture, 52 
Stalagmite, 18 
Standing stones, 45, 127 
Star-myths, 117 
Star distances, 215 

spectrum, 220 
Stone Age, New, 23, 43, 49, 52, 

112 
Stone Age, Old, 7, 23, 39, 41, 

43, 49, 52 
Stone-worship, 125 
Stonehenge, 45 
Strata, 16 

Struggle for life, 27 
Sumatra, 11 
Sunday, loi 
Sun, duration of, 218 

elements in, 120 

origin of, 215 
Sun myths, 113 
Sun-worship, 130, 134 
Sympathetic magic, 80, 126 



Taboo, 150 
Talmud, 131, 182 
Tattooing, 47 
Telegraphy, 221 



Telephone, 221 
Temple, 144 
Terminus, 127, 151 
Tertiary Age, 22 
Theatre, 81 
Thumb, II 

Thunderbolts, 112, 126 
Tin, 48 

Tools, primitive, 15, 18, 41 
Totemism, 104, 140 
Transmigration, 165 
Travel, 222 
Tree myths, 143 

worship, 141 
Trees, dwellings in, 31 
Trinity, 178 
Trinities, 180 
Tripitaka, 193 

U 
Union is strength, 28 
Universe, 209, 212, 213 
Uranium, 218 

V 

Vedas, 63, 192 
Vedda cave-dweller, 6 
Vesta, 128 

Virgin fire-keepers, 129 
Virgin Mary, 155, 180 

W 
War, 56, 86 

dance, 79 
Warmth, 28 



240 INDEX 

Water, action of, 1 6, 20, 216 X 

worship, 124 
T,T . ... Xenopnanes, 171 

Weapons, primitive, 15, 22 ^ ' ' 

ATir 1 J X rays, 221 - 

Week-days, 133 ^ ' 

Wells, holy, 124 

Wheat, 51 Y 

Wireless telegraphy, 221 Yggdrasil, 144 

Witches, 125, 148 

Women, pictures of primitive, y 

38 
Words, value of, 59, 61 Zend, 63 

World Life-Trees, 143 Avesta, 194 

Worship, nature, i2off. Zoroaster, 185 

Writing, 66 Zulus, 118 



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" The record of an English family's coaching tour in a great old- 
fashioned wagon. A charming narrative, as quaint and original as its 
name." — Booknews Monthly. 

Mabie — Book of Christmas 

By H. W. Mabie 

" A beautiful collection of Christmas verse and prose in which all the 
old favorites will be found in an artistic setting." — The St. Louis Mirror. 

Major — The Bears of Blue River 
By Charles Major 
" An exciting story with all the thrills the title implies." 

Major — Uncle Tom Andy Bill 

By Charles Major 

"A stirring story full of bears, Indians, and hidden treasures." — 
Cleveland Leader. 

Nesbit — The Railway Children 

By E. Nesbit 

" A delightful story revealing the author's intimate knowledge of 
juvenile ways." — The Nation. 

Whyte — The Story Book Girls 

By Christina G. Whyte 

"A book that all girls will read with dehght — a sweet, wholesome 
story of girl life." 

Wright — Dream Fox Story Book 

By Mabel Osgood Wright 

" The whole book is delicious with its wise and kindly humor, its just 
perspective of the true value of things." 

Wright — Aunt Jimmy's Will 

By Mabel Osgood Wright 
" Barbara has written no more delightful book than this." 



